Gift Giving Tradition

by Olga
(Canada)

I started this new birthday gift giving tradition because I can never answer the question "What do you want for your birthday this year?"

Writing wish lists is a torment for me. Not everyone in my family considers giving me money a meaningful gift.... So birthdays were headache until I came up with this idea.

I asked everyone how much money they wanted to spend on the gift. Once I got amounts, I went shopping. It was fun to look for something for myself that was paid for by others :)

Once I bought all the gifts, I put them in boxes and wrapped them up.
Each of my guests got the box that I bought with their money. They were supposed to say, "Dear Olga, Happy birthday, and here is my gift for you. This gift is meant to... and here they described that they think their mysterious gift was to do for me....

It was fun to see them shaking boxes, guessing and giving the gift to me. But the biggest fun was to open the box and match the gift to the description of what it does.

There was a lot of laughter every time we did it. It was win-win-win: They did not have to shop; I shopped and I had fun; and then we had fun all together.

I have never regifted anything since I started this gift giving tradition.

Sophie Says

I love this birthday gift giving tradition Olga. It seems great fun, and a good way to get what you actually want!

We use gift giving traditions in our family to enusre we receive birthday gifts we actually want is to use the Amazon Wish List.

When ever you see something you'd like for your birthday just add it to your Amazon Wish List. Let your friends and family know where they can find it by emailing them a link and they can find it when ever they want. When a gift is purchased it gets removed from your list so you don' get the same gift twice.

Even if your family don't want to purchase something exactly on your list, they will still have a better idea of what you'd like. I had a watch on mine last year. My brother bought me a similar watch that he'd chosen himself, but it was actually much nicer than the one I'd picked.

You can even rank your gift list in order of importance, so people know what you've like most.