Friends add comfort and warmth to life, not to mention fun, but at Christmas time, the gift issue can be stressful. Having someone who you like to hang out with, just makes everything better, but do you buy them a gift? If so, what? How much do you spend? What if you have more disposable income than your friend? Do you buy something you’ll think they like, but costs more than they can afford to spend on you?
Why can’t this be simpler? If this is your friend, you know her likes and dislikes, her hobbies and longings. That might make getting a gift easier when you go shopping or it could make things stickier.
You might want to start with the question of whether you’re getting each other gifts, at all. There are some of us who like tokens of our friendships to be spontaneous and unstructured. This means you want to let an idea hit you and offer the gift to your friend without discussion before hand. It can be a fun, charming experience…or you might be treading on shaky ground. What if your friend doesn’t like the commercialized aspects of gift-getting at Christmas and Hanukkah? You might know this, but not having any conversation about the tradition beforehand, you might not.
What if your friend is on a very tight budget and doesn’t like to talk about it? You might have seen a charming necklace that will go with her favorite outfit and you snapped it up without thinking. Does the gift surprise your friend to the point of you having something for her and her not having a gift for you? What if she belongs to a religion that doesn’t believe in participating in the exchanging of gifts at Christmas?
Talking about gift-exchanging early is probably a good idea. While some people feel this—and the swapping of lists—takes some of the fun out of the season, it might be a safer alternative than springing your idea of Christmas on them. If you and your friends have a disparity in financial resources, talking about everyone’s idea of gift-getting is a good plan, and this is when setting a limit on an amount of money spent on a gift makes sense. It is also a good plan for the one with the tightest budget to set the limit.
This kind of conversation requires tact. You might want to start with “Shall we exchange token gifts this Christmas?” Then, bring up the idea of lists. While the more spontaneous gift-giver dislikes being limited to the items on a list, this can give you an idea of the individual’s needs and preferences. Otherwise, you’re likely to buy gifts you think are cool, but which have greater chance of ending up in their garage sale or charity donations. While the one with the biggest disposable income needs to be the one to mention the idea of lists, the one with the smaller income should be the one volunteering a monetary limit.
This is way more complicated than in previous days when our grandmothers knitted winter hats for their friends or baked cookies for them. Either of these is a lovely gift, even now, but some friends really prefer a gift card to Itunes.
It’s okay to talk about these things amongst friends. Having affection for one another includes avoiding Yuletide embarrassment when possible.