Such is my dismay over this annual post-Christmas ritual that I have become a raging regifter in response to it.
And, as the concept featured on Oprah, I no longer feel afraid to admit it. According to Wikipedia, regifting is the act of taking a gift that has been received and giving it to somebody else, sometimes in the guise of a new gift. Wikipedia sets out the following etiquette for regifting:
– rewrapping the gift;
– not using the gift before regifting it;
– and not giving the gift back to the original gift-giver.
Sri Lankans are actually almost compulsive in their dedication to regifting. I once had what I thought was a brilliant idea for an art-house film. The film would follow the path of a box of Lindt chocolates from its purchase on sale at Coles, to its gifting and re-gifting and re-re-gifting throughout the Sri Lankan community. If you GPS tagged the chocolate box you could actually plot an accurate map of most of the community’s location in Sydney. I got so excited by the idea I even wrote an outline for a Deepa Mehta-esque trilogy called Coriander, Cumin and Lindt. Strangely, the Arts Council never emailed me back.
Every year, in the lead up to Christmas, I can be found surreptitiously squirrelling away a few presents before they make it onto the children’s present-radar. I do this because:
– the children have too many toys and more toys only make them want and feel entitled to more toys. (Seriously children, we currently have a Khun Zhu Pet plague in our house – how many mechanised kung-fu hamsters do you need?);
– I loathe Westfield and anything that minimises the number of trips I have to make to Toys R Us is a good thing, even stealing from my own children; and
Top Comments
I am THE regifter, until I accidentally regifted the scented soap which my son gave me one mothers day errrk! Not only did he realise, he loudly told the recipient of the gift what I had done!
(in my defence, a woman over 40 gets so many soaps that it can be very hard to keep up)
Now I am more strategic with my regift, but still do it.
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Love your work, Shankari. I regift and am happy to receive a regift, whether it's brand new in the box or actually secondhand - as long as the giver thinks I will genuinely like it.
The best I find is when you give it to someone for no occasion, though, and simply say, 'hey, I thought you'd appreciate this'.
When I have kids, I will definitely be following your lead of removing excess presents for regifting/charity/staggered distribution at birthdays, etc. I recently vowed that from now on, I will only give my niece and nephew 'experience' gifts (i.e. taking them to a movie/zoo, etc) to be enjoyed at a later date. It's quality time, appreciated by the parents as free babysitting and will hopefully mean more to them than a toy that they will tire of.
I guess we all want the gratification of watching the kid open the gift when we're there to see the joy on their face but it just doesn't work that way. We talk about the kids being ungrateful and behaving badly at birthdays/Christmas, but I think all of the adults (especially grandparents!) need to take responsibility and realise that they help to create these little monsters.