Christmas list dilemma

[Prime Mover]

Hey guys. I'm writing about a problem that haunts me every holiday season. I swear that I'll fix it one day, but I've never been able to. See, all my family and friends of course ask me, "what do you want for christmas?" and I never am able to tell them anything. Problem is, I kind of live in a mentality that if I want it or need it, I buy it if I can afford it. If I can't, I'm certainly not going to ask for it as a gift because I don't want to put someone else out of their paycheck. Also, my tastes have become so specific that I either have to direct them to the exact product, or it doesn't matter: "I'd like a Steven Slate FG-X processor plugin with the free iLok2 bundle" is a mouthful, and probably won't make it to the list. Growing up as a kid, my family always had a "surprise me" mentality, and I still live by it to this day. What's the point of a gift if you know what it's going to be? So I hate to give people a specific product.

I also have the reverse problem, I don't want people to all out tell me what they want, because I feel like I should know them well enough to find something they would like on my own, but some years I drive myself nuts racking my brain and pleading with mutual friends to give me ideas! Especially my parents.

Grrr...

[cuttime]

Ask for money or gift certificates.

[bkshepard]

I like the Amazon Wish List. Not only can you list things available from Amazon, you can even list things from other sites as well. I create a list that has things from fairly cheap to expensive and then send the link to the list to family. The great thing is that if someone buys something on the list, you won't know it unless you actually try to buy it yourself, but for other viewers, that item will not show on the list so you don't get duplicates. It's pretty cool.

[HCMarkus]

My suggestion would be to become fabulously wealthy, buy iPads and Ferraris for all your friends and relatives, then sit back and enjoy their smiles and shouts as they open their gifts.

Absent great wealth, focus on gifts that primarily cost effort and ingenuity, and put your heart into it.

Absent money, and time, chocolate is usually a good bet.

Anyway, 'tis far better to give than to receive.
Unless you have a generous, fabulously wealthy friend or relative.

[twistedtom]

My wife and I used to exchange gifts with a number of friends and family members, often it is hard to tell just what to give, and the same goes for them. We decided to talk to the friends and family that we exchanged gifts to a narrow it down to just a few people. The few people are all close family and we know what to get them. There are four families on our road and we are all like a close community, there is a tradition of exchanging homemade gifts, so we go along with the tradition and do baked goods. Perhaps by not buying things no one really wants or needs, I am hurting the economy, but I kind of think it is an odd and wasteful system that relays on people buying junk no one actually needs to work. We try to get cards out to people to let them know we are thinking of them.