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Re-gifting: do or don’t?

by on December 27, 2012 in Musings, The Daily Dish

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Yesterday I posed the question to my Facebook friends:

OK, let’s be honest, is re-gifting not cool or a form of recycling?

And the vast majority of people who responded said yes — but you have to do it responsibly.

My friend, Melinda, said it’s OK “only if done honestly.” For example, you should say, “Hey, I got this for Christmas but it doesn’t fit/not my color and I thought it would look great on you.”

Pal Titus agreed: “If you really don’t want it, and you give it to someone who really does, it’s a form of paying it forward.”

And my classmate, Brian, called re-gifting a form of recycling: “If you feel it’s a better fit for someone else then why not.”

Turns out, most Americans feel the same way — and they don’t even mind getting a recycled gift, either.

According to a recent survey, 83 percent of responders said they don’t mind receiving a re-gifted present. And half of them said they suspected they had received one in the past.

But get this: only 35 percent said they had, themselves, re-gifted something.

I’m not sure if I believe that.

My guess is we’ve all, in some way, have re-gifted something. Like that box of See’s Candies you decided to share with your favorite secretary. Or that third blender you handed off to your little sister who left for college. I feel like we’ve all done that.

But true re-gifting — the practice of passing on a present to someone else as a present — is a little trickier.

For starters, you can’t re-gift everything. Monogrammed towels, for example, aren’t appropriate to pass on. And you have to be careful you don’t give away something to someone who might have ties to the original giver. It would be entirely awkward seeing a gift from your boss on the desk of a co-worker.

So I’m throwing it out there: you think re-gifting is appropriate? And when is it not? I’d love to hear your stories!

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Cat’s Gift Guide 2012

by on December 17, 2012 in Musings, The Daily Dish

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It seems like every year, Christmas creeps up on us. We look up from our computer screens or stacks of dirty dishes and realize, “OMG, it’s Dec. 17!”

You frantically draft a list of people you need to buy gifts for and run around the mall, looking for that perfect gift.

Trust me, you’ll never find it.

I’ve been looking for The Perfect Gift my entire life. It doesn’t exist. You can only find The Almost Perfect Gift — or, in my case, The Perfect Gift That Doesn’t Blow My Budget.

So this year, instead of posting a gift idea a day, I gathered the best 15 gift ideas I could come up with this year — all of which you can buy locally. (Meaning, you can wait until the last minute to buy these gifts.)

Each gift is specific to a kind of person — the gardener, the eco-conscious, the foodie. You’ll be surprised, when you take a break and really look around, you’ll find something — maybe not The Perfect Gift — for everyone on your list. Promise.

Baxter of California Shave Kit

Baxter of California Shave Kit
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Guys aren't easy to shop for. (Trust me, I have a brother and husband.) They like what they like — and what they really like is usually really expensive. But I was surprised how much my bro and hubby have taken to this: a conventional wet shaving kit, this one by Baxter of California. Nothing beats the luxury or close shave. $70, Mojo Barbershop, 1157 Bethel St.

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‘It is time to change things’

by on December 14, 2012 in Musings, The Daily Dish

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I was driving to the post office when my mom called.

“Did you hear what happened in Connecticut?”

I hadn’t. I was chopping mangoes and addressing Christmas cards — amazingly, with the TV off — and ignored the pings on my iPhone.

She told me the grizzly story: a gunman opened fire in an elementary school, killing six adults and 20 children. He then turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger. Police recovered from the scene a semi-automatic .223 Bushmaster, a Glock and a Sig Sauer. In an emotional statement, President Obama articulated exactly how I was feeling: “Our hearts our broken today.”

I had to pull over. I sat in my car and cried for about a solid 10 minutes. I can’t imagine going through something like this, families mourning the deaths of their children, kids watching classmates slain in a place that they think is safe.

And it doesn’t help that it’s 11 days until Christmas. Or that, two days ago, another gunman shot and killed two at an Oregon mall.

I can hardly write this blog post without shaking and crying. I’m just so completely unhinged right now.

These tragedies make you re-evaluate your life. The petty complaints, the arguments, the gossip, the grudges we hold, the meanness we perpetuate — it all seems so empty and stupid now. It all seems so pathetic and embarrassing.

Every time these things happen, we look at our lives and feel grateful for what we have. And that’s good. But those feelings are almost always fleeting, as we quickly get caught up in our everyday stresses, the competition, our own insecurities — and we forget about the lessons we should have learned. We forget because this didn’t directly happen to us.

It’s human to do this. We all do this. But maybe we really need to stop and try.

This isn’t about condemning people who are materialistic or consumed by their own problems, not matter how big or small. This is about us being mean to others, about being malicious and selfish and cruel. I don’t care if you have an addiction to Louis Vuitton or need to flat-iron your hair before leaving the house — we all have our vices! — but there’s just no need to hate anymore.

Dr. Drew Pinsky said it best on CNN this afternoon: “Kids (were) massacred at close range. It unbelievable we live in that world now … It is time to change things … We must stop this. Enough already.”

I agree. Enough already.

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Down with commercialism — next year!

Down with commercialism — next year!

by on December 26, 2011 in Musings, The Daily Dish

At the annual Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI condemned the commercialization of Christmas and urged the faithful to “see through the superficial glitter of this season.”

I agree!

We’ve lost the true meaning of the season, that we should all come together and, well, hmm… Sing around a decorated tree?

Wait. What’s the purpose of Christmas again?

All kidding aside, ’tis the season of celebrating the birth of Jesus in a little manager in Bethlehem. At least to the Christians. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Shinto, Shamanic, a few Christian faiths, atheists and agnostics — really, most of the world — don’t celebrate the religious-based version of Christmas.

But many of us decorate overpriced sheered evergreens, hang stockings by the fireplace (or, in my case, the wine chiller), and tell stories about a fat guy in a red suit who slides down your chimney — a felony in most states, by the way — to leave gifts for good kids. And we have no idea why.

And today, the day after Christmas, is one of the biggest retail holidays of the year — second to the day after Thanksgiving, when stores offer deep discounts to bargain-hunting folks starting their Christmas shopping.

It will likely be even more profitable for retailers considering it’s a holiday for most American workers. Meaning, they have nothing better to do than flock to the nearest mall and return all those gifts they got yesterday.

If the start of Christmas — Black Friday, on which retail sales totaled $10.6 billion, by the way — and the day after Christmas — today — are the bookends of the season, it’s obvious the holiday centers around shopping and spending money.

So what is Christmas, except a hugely profitable season for retailers and restaurants, many of which often spend the rest of the year in the red and are financially rescued during the last quarter of the year?

The gifts, though, aren’t the best part of Christmas to me. It’s getting together with friends and family, it’s hearing Christmas songs on the radio, it’s having an excuse to bake gingerbread and sugar cookies. I just love that the season compels us to do things we don’t do the rest of the year. And even if we shouldn’t wait until December to meet up with old friends or hand out cookies to co-workers, it’s still nice that we do it.

To me, that’s what Christmas is all about.

But I’m not returning my gifts!

Hope you all had a great holiday season!

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