Where are my Prezzies!??!

Christmas-time - a time for friends, family and faith renewal. Well, at least that is what it is supposed to be. But it is also a stressful time. The art of present-giving is not an easy one. How does one find that gift which would a) demonstrate that you know the recipient's tastes and preferences b) look fairly expensive but not be too expensive and c) would be in line with what you would likely receive from the recipient.

As a child, one memory of Christmas was the gift giving from my uncles and aunts. We used to get individual presents from each of them. I still remember the floor all covered with wrapping paper. But then as the number of us cousins increased, the parents decided to take action. They decided to pool their resources together and buy one big gift per child. That reduced the stress of having to purchase and wrap numerous gifts and at the same time the kids could get those big-ticket items which they'd always wanted.

One of my cousins also had a fairly simple method, albeit the exact opposite of the "pooling" method described above. She would buy presents for everyone from the $1.99 Shop (this was before the chain folded) and give them out at her annual Christmas party. She proclaimed the source of her presents to everyone (with pride) and the gifts were generally quite good for a laugh. One year I decided I would out-do her in the buying of cheap gifts and gave her a free gift which I received when I made another purchase that year. Not sure if she has quite forgiven me for that - she has definitely not forgotten.

Over the years, my immediate family has evolved various systems to ensure that we get the presents we want. We provide gift lists to others, or even buy our own presents and pass them to others to wrap up. Then, there are the staple items - books, CDs, shirts and jewellery. Even so, there have been unfortunate duplications of gifts in the past, particularly books. That's why I like buying gifts whilst overseas over the year and putting them in a secret drawer until Christmas.

I have yet to encounter any good system for office-party gift exchanges. I personally like a system whereby people put down what they want to receive and so the giver knows exactly what to get. But I've been told that this lacks spontaneity and surprise. Ah well, what to do. I just think that the spirit of giving is somewhat thwarted if the recipient looks at your gift and thinks inside, hmmm. And I speak as one who has received comic-printed toilet paper as a gift. What was I supposed to do with that? Use it for the purpose intended? The more common practice appears to be, that you pull someone's name out of the jar and buy for that person. Now, this is pretty hazardous. There are people who are good at buying gifts and those who are not. There are people who are hard to buy for and those whose tastes are well known. There are people you just know better and those you don't know as well. So the problem is, how do you buy something for someone you may not know very much about? I just looked around the internet sites for some assistance on present-buying and this website: http://www.imagini.net/ seemed to offer some interesting solutions. I tried it out (on myself) and it did come up with unusual and imaginative gifts (as well as some pretty standard ones). Of course the downside is that it does require you to know something about the person you are buying the gift for.

Finally, heartfelt best wishes is something which is always acceptable, so I can only say:

Casey Wishes Everyone a Merry Christmas!

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