Gift Giving

Christmas is approaching and I need to try to come up with gifts for my friends and family. For some people this is quite easy to do and for other people, like me, it’s almost impossible. I am extremely poor right now (just spent my last dollar at Chick-fil-a last night), so that pretty much means I have to either beg my mom for cash and get everyone really cheap crappy gifts or I have to make them something. Why is gift giving so hard?

I think standards for gift giving have been raised a lot, especially as I am getting older. People either want something expensive or something meaningful. What happened to the days when I could just draw my parents a picture and give my sisters and friends a pack of gum? Now everyone can buy their own gum and my parents have stopped appreciating my poorly colored pictures from the coloring books I have owned since I was 6. I really would like to get people something meaningful, but thanks to my lack of creativity that’s a lot harder said than done. I have been spending hours on pinterest trying to come up with something creative, but everything involves money and a lot of time and talent. So every year I end up getting my friends and family something from the dollar store, while they get something either expensive or creative and I end up looking really stupid. Expectations for giving gifts are getting ridiculously high.

It is also hard to know who to give gifts to. I definitely can’t afford to give gifts to all my friends and there’s no way all my friends will give gifts to me, but how am I supposed to know which friends are going to get me something? Some of my friends are doing secret Santa, which I thought meant that I didn’t have to give any gifts to any of the friends that are also doing secret Santa until one of them came up to me and said that she was so excited to give me my gift and that it was such an amazing gift. Great. I have no idea who I am supposed to give gifts to and I don’t want to be mean and not give someone a gift when they got me one. So I am left trying to think of the people who are my best friends and would give me a gift, which is extremely hard.

I am not sure if it is hard for everyone to give gifts. Maybe it’s just natural for some people, but for people like me, gift giving can be a long and difficult process. With the higher expectations and trying to decide who to give gifts to, preparing for Christmas can be quite stressful.  

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