The Gift of Giving - [website] Published: 24th of May 2011 by: (c) Staff Training Reporter
Regifting – the act of rewrapping a birthday or Christmas present and giving it to someone else – is by no means a new phenomenon, but it is becoming a far more acceptable practice than ever before.
There are umpteen reasons to regift, the most common of which happens when you get a gift from someone that’s actually more suited to them than you. In this instance it makes sense to give the gift to someone who, like the person who originally gave you the present, would fully appreciate it.
Other reasons include sheer laziness, not liking the present or disliking the person who gave you the gift in the first place.
The reasons are less important than the method, though, and one has to be very careful when deciding to regift instead of buying new. You can imagine the embarrassment of giving someone the same gift they gave to you at some point, and you’ve also got to be careful not to verbalise the fact that the gift is not actually new.
Unless you’re giving the gift as more of a giveaway than a present you’d be wise to keep quite about its origins. Announcing that you received the gift a while back from Aunt Flo really just says that you don’t like it and want to get it off your hands, which is the perfect way to spoil relationships.
At the same time you’ve got to bear in mind that it if isn’t new you shouldn’t be giving it away – the standing lamp you’ve had plugged in for the last month that now doesn’t go with your new furniture is not okay to give as a gift.
But there are some things that are okay to give as gifts even if they aren’t new (they shouldn’t be used though), like the crystal glasses you got from your uncle that don’t go with your existing set. Should one of your friends or family move to a new home where they’re starting out these glasses would be an ideal present.
It seems then that rewrapping and regiving presents is something that (in the right circumstances) is okay to do and more and more people are first making sure there’s not a gift they’ve received that is more suited to someone else before going out and buying presents, which in this world where our mantra has become ‘conserve, conserve, conserve’ makes total sense.
So tell me, are you a regifter? Would you be offended if you found out that a present you’d received had been passed along instead of carefully picked from a shop? Has regifting ever gone wrong for you? Or would you simply never do it?
