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How much do Americans spend each year on gifts?

Drowning in gifts

  • [PostingForGirlfriendFilter] What to do about my girlfriend's mother's excessive gift-giving? So my girlfriend has the same problem every year at around this time (both around Christmas and her birthday, which is also in Dec.) with the gifts her mother sends. If it were simply a case of receiving gifts she didn't like, the obvious answer would be to just accept the gifts graciously and lie to the mother, but there is quite a bit more to the situation. In looking for similar threads, I found http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/50044 which should give you some idea of the types of gifts she buys. Her mother is really quite unreasonable about the whole gift giving experience in the following ways: -We have a small apartment, and since we are both in our 20s, we tend to move around a lot. My girlfriend has told her repeatedly that we don't have room for large gifts or things that take up a lot of space, but she insists on sending whatever she has picked out regardless of size. She also tends to send a lot of gifts at once, when we really do not have room in our apartment. My girlfriend has often requested entertainment such as CDs, DVDs, etc. that she can enjoy without filling up our apartment, but the mother will not listen to gift requests. We have actually ended up taking many of her gifts to Goodwill by the bagful just to free up space in our apartment. This affects me too, as I don't like a cluttered apartment. -The mother is completely against "practical" gifts. In this interpretation, practical means anything my girlfriend might actually enjoy as well as mundane items that we need. We are both recently out of school, don't have much money, and would actually really appreciate it if she sent us a gift we could use. Actually my girlfriend would be quite happy if she didn't send any gifts, but gave her peace of mind by paying off some of her bills or helping her with student loans, or even a gift certificate to a chain store, but the mother won't hear of such practical gifts. Her idea of an ideal gift is a decoration for the apartment (which we don't need) or more furniture (definitely don't need). -The gifts come with stipulations. Knowing that my girlfriend actually doesn't like many of the gifts she gets, she continues to buy the same types of gifts but will then tell my girlfriend not to give away or return any of the gifts. She expects my girlfriend to keep every single thing she gets her for all of time. Our apartment is literally filled with boxes holding previous years' gifts, and they just sit there. If it were just a matter of a few gifts, we could take them out when she came to visit, but it is small gifts by the dozens. -The returnability of the gifts is virtually null anyway. It would be great if my girlfriend could return the gifts she doesn't like and use the money to buy something that would make her happy, but while the mother spends quite a bit of money on the gifts, they cannot really be sold on ebay or returned to a store. -There is the issue of taste. The mother uses gift-giving to impose her tastes on my girlfriend, who feels some obligation to keep the gifts even if she doesn't like them. She doesn't understand my girlfriend's tastes at all, and sees my girlfriend's dislike of her gifts as a character flaw. She blatantly picks out gifts that she would like without thinking about my girlfriend's wants at all. Like I said before, in our apartment of limited space, we would like to set the decor with items of our choosing. She also does not know my girlfriend's size as far as clothing goes and routinely gets clothing that is too big for her. -She attaches sentimental value to everything. Not just to the occasional gift that clearly took some thought and effort to pick out or that she made herself, but to little knick-knacks, paperclips, the boxes that the gifts come in, shoes, clothing, small pillows, everything has so much meaning and sentiment attatched to it, which notches up the guilt factor quite a bit. -My girlfriend and I are concerned about the environment, and we are upset with the wastefulness of the gift-giving. There is the excessive packaging she uses (much of which is non-recyclable) as well as the cost in fuel to ship large items across the country. Once again, smaller gifts would solve this problem, but the mother is persistent. I know this is coming across as us sounding terribly ungrateful and bratty, but this happens every single year, and all the guilt associated with the expectations of the mother really wears on my girlfriend, and make her hate receiving gifts when it is something that should make her happy. She has tried everything, from politely suggesting gifts (doesn't work), to asking the mother to donate the money to charity rather than spending it on her (to which she says that she will donate money to charity and buy gifts for her), to asking her to forego gifts alltogether (she won't). This upsets me, since I see the mother spending lots of money on gifts for her daughter without caring that my girlfriend doesn't like the gifts at all, when she could spend a lot less and make my girlfriend a lot happier. I suppose it'll be clear to most of you that this isn't the only issue that exists between my girlfriend and her mom, but it is one that comes up every year without fail. How do we end the madness?

  • Answer:

    Maybe it's time for a grand gesture - something that will (1) make the mom PAUSE, (2) absorb the message that your gf loves her and does not need gifts to feel loved by her, and (3) re-evaluate the gift giving. Sometimes I think people tune out what they don't want to hear, even if they hear it repeatedly, but they can be stunned into listening if the dialogue is broken by a sudden, dramatic event. In my case, it's usually that my bf gets so aggravated with me that he starts yelling, and then I finally pay attention and make the effort he's been asking for all along. Since yelling at her probably wouldn't be appropriate, what about something dramatic but nice? This doesn't seem quite dramatic enough, but maybe she could write a poem (saying gf loves her, doesn't need these gifts to feel loved, & possibly also something comical about your tiny apartment or other gripes), print it out beautifully, frame it and send it to her. Btw, this needs to be nipped in the bud. Imagine what your lives will be like if she's a grandma!

SBMike at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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This appears to be some sort of mother/daughter power play, bigger than physical objects, or your long list of excuses (concerned about the environment? This isn't the felling of a forest; it's a few boxes once a year from the woman who bore you. Deal.) What if your girlfriend stopped fighting it? That seems to be the most reasonable answer here. Let Mom buy whatever she wants. Smile, say thank you, give her a big hug!! Go home, laugh at how ugly the gift is. Donate to church rummage sale, take to White Elephant party, or regift. Repeat yearly. Why should your girlfriend get any say in what her mother gives her for Christmas? Mom wants to buy gifts, let her buy the gifts. Stop doing the 15 year old girl dance of "Moooom, I know what's best for me!!!111", and maybe things will quiet down.

ThePinkSuperhero

Also, and this is something that took me forever to learn about my dad (who gets under my skin in a totally different way), the gifts are her mom's way of saying "I love you." When you reject the gifts she feels like you are rejecting her love. So, make sure you try to do other things that show her that that's not the case, to make up for the way you handle the gifts.

kindall

Maybe a paradoxical intervention would work here. Tell her you *love* the gifts. Tell her you want more and more. Everytime you talk to her ask her for more gifts. Don't let a single conversation or letter go by without a request for more gifts. Hopefully, she'll start seeing the two of you as spoiled, and she'll feel that she's being a good parent by weaning you off gifts altogether.

jasper411

Is she trying to fill your house with junk maybe? I'm a minimalist-hoarder... I have no dinning table as it will get in the way of my space. Hmm and I have no coffee table either (that was more out of not really finding a real demand for having my legs brutalized by a useless crap recepticle though to be quite honest). Anyway people always want to fill your space, what is with that? 'A gift' means two happy parties otherwise it's more aptly described when you add grudging, thoughtless or unwanted ect. So by definition you sorry your girl rather is not receiving 'gifts'. It's too late for this now but an innocent sidestep initially would've been to send them back. As "I hate that/not even remotely my size/*insert blunt and obvious* so I just assumed it was a mix up and figured whoever it was intended for might like to have it... What? Was that stuff for me... Oh...But why? Yeah *reiterrate why inappropriate* so no harm done then!! - Because* - I'm sure somebody will want/enjoy it." So now she just needs to be blunt. "I hate this. I want it to stop. There is nothing sentimental about it because I hate it. You like it? So keep it at your house where I will hate it alot less. If you want it to mean something to me take ME into consideration when attaching sentimental worth to whatever YOU please. I can assure you all this fucking rubbish and all the bullshit over it from you is actually beginning to take on a meaning that will stay with me long after I've managed to offload it all! And it's hardly flattering." Then change tack - How you say it is far more crucial than what. Initially let it all out so she can see just what that junk means to you and then soften everything but explain that in order for you to even be inclined to like any of ALL of her gifts. She's got to wake up and meet you halfway at worst. Or it's not a gift (qualifying as thoughtless or unwanted hardly counts). Something like that should do the trick! Both of you grow some balls (jealousy is not your colour in the slightest, is it mate?) and you'll be just fine!

mu~ha~ha~ha~har

Sell the crap on ebay. They don't call it fleabay for nothin'.

Mr. Gunn

It is a control thing. You have to be mean. When you get them call her up immediately (if not in person) and tell her that you did not want this, that they have no value to you and that you wish to return them. Do not take no for an answer. I was in a similar situation, I said nothing was better than this. I get very little gifts and get a guilt trip every year for being "spoiled". Sorry, getting clothes in which you specifically stated you did not want (in a style your mother wishes you to dress in), furniture which does not fit in with the decor and other things that are overt attempts to control your life are annoying and stressful. It sounds like a "good problem to have", but it is not. Do not expect this to end well, it won't. You will be, on the other hand, better for it.

geoff.

Sounds like all you can do is feed the items directly into a charity. Then write to Mom and say "Thank you for X, Y, and Z. Since we have no room, we have donated them to Foo Charity, who appreciated them very much." If mom STILL doesn't get the hint, then at the very least a charity gets something it might possibly be able to sell.

drstein

My MIL does this. Gives us totally crazy cheap and tacky stuff, tries to impose her taste on our decor, etc. etc. Ties huge amounts of sentimentality and meaning to everything about the gift. We live in a 700 sq. ft. cottage and enjoy the minimalism it enforces. I shop with caution and weed out my own items on a regular basis. My husband has been giving her offerings the brushoff for years before I even met him (this helped greatly to ease my guilt). We've tried telling her, begging, pleading, etc. This year we had a yard sale - at her house, because she lives in a better neighborhood. Along with everything else we brought many of the gifts and were really low-key about it. She was a little hurt. We gently reminded her all the same things we'd said before. It was okay overall. In the end she actually took out a few things to re-gift to someone else. She may leave us off her shopping list this year. We'd be very happy with that result. We can all show love in other ways. Be kind and careful if you try something similar.

FuzzyVerde

jasper411, that kind of reverse psychology might work with a five-year-old but this situation seems a bit more complicated. Lots of good advice above about trying to recognize the underlying message behind the ham-fisted gift-giving. For those of us (I hope most of us) with sane, well-meaning, and loving parent(s) with terrible taste, that's a very useful insight. In this case, I suspect the underlying message isn't "I love you" as much as "I own you." I like hermitosis's suggestion, for the reasons stated. Since it's geographically impossible, here's a potential adaptation. (From here on out, I'm talking to your girlfriend.) * Make one more good-faith effort to talk to your mother about this. Tell her that you appreciate the effort and the money she puts into the gifts, and you recognize them as a representation of her love. But this year has been especially hard and the very most loving thing she could do this year would be to pay this month's student loan, or credit card bill, or whatever. Be explicit. Stress the temporary nature of the request. * When this doesn't work and you get the same bale of crap, pack it all up in the box it came in. Get out all the boxes of unwanted crap you've been dragging around from place to place, and get them ready to mail. (Air-popped popcorn is an excellent and environmentally friendly packing material.) Send it all back to your mom. Every single item. (USPS book rate is very, very cheap.) * When everything's sent, give yourself an entire afternoon with nothing but yourself and a pad of paper and a pen/pencil. Imagine the worst possible reaction your mother might have. Imagine all the possible reactions, from you, your boyfriend, your best friend, the random AskMe commenter. If you're visual, draw it. If you're verbal, write it. * Send a letter to your mother to explain what you're sending and why, saying pretty much what hermitosis suggested, plus anything specific you want to add. * She'll be horrified/angry/vindictive, whatever. But you've anticipated that, and you've played with various reactions. You're an adult and you have the option of including your mother in your life, or not. If including her causes you more pain than excluding her—then you should exclude her. You don't owe her the mortgage on a happy, self-sufficient adulthood.

vetiver

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