Do your parents still buy you Christmas gifts?

My mother still buys me Christmas gifts. Dad #1 just sent me a check and an iTunes gift card.

As long as it makes them happy, go for it. Remember the old saying, "it's better to give than to receive"? Even for a skeptic like me, it still works.

 

I lost my grandmother earlier this year. She was all about Christmas. I was surprised to get anything from my father, who once announced that when she died, "we [wouldn't] have Christmas" that year.

That, and the fact that my father and I are now in a similar place as my mother and I used to be.

 

Ask for gift cards for some of your favorite restaurants. You don't need more stuff, but you still gotta eat.

 

Both my parents give money. They're married, but they do it independently. They are four adult siblings, three of whom are married, two of whom have children of their own. Ages of the siblings run from 38-47. My mom also buys for the grandkids, and my brother's wife's youngest two kids, who live with them.

Except for the youngest adult sibling, who goes through money like there's no tomorrow and will be in debt until the day she dies, no one *needs* money. (And giving her $1k isn't going to help her whatsoever.)

But they're your parents. Like Moddy said, you let them do what they want. It might not make them "happy," as you see it, Dick, but I really think parental happiness is bizarre. For my father, giving money is the *only* thing he knows to do to show he cares about us. So I take it and pretty much just stick it to the next year's 401(k) contribution.

 

If it makes your mother happy and she's not doing without needs in doing so, why is it such a big deal?

 

I'm 32, and this is the first year that my mother isn't buying me something. I'm fine with that for a lot of reasons. For one, she would also stress out over what to get me because I'm one of those people who say, "I really don't need anything." Of course, she'd counter my wife with "but what does he WANT that he wouldn't buy because he doesn't think he NEEDS it." For example, I got a Kindle 2 back when that was a big deal (like $250 instead of the $75 you can get now). One reason she did this is because I don't have kids, so she didn't have grandkids by me for her to spoil.

But, now my brother has kids. So she has grandkids to spoil. For the first couple of years, she would spoil the grandkids and still try to do something for me. I finally told her this year to just get me something simple and do more for the kids. They're 5 and 3, so Christmas still has that magic feeling that I lost long, long ago to cynicism (and I've worked enough Christmas-time retail to hate the holiday). Plus, since I'm not in the best financial shape, this is the first year I'm not buying anything for my parents. My options were to buy everybody something for no more than $10 each or to buy two really nice gifts for the kids. We all agreed to spoil the kids, because Christmas is still a magical time for them.

My wife's family? One sister has four kids, so she puts zero thought into gifts for anyone outside of her kids or husband. $10 gift cards to everybody else. We got to the point where all the adults were exchanging gift cards, realized it was ridiculous, and opted for either drawing one name out of a hat (and no gift cards) or nothing at all.

 

Your mother is irrational, narrow-minded, traditionalist and boring. Cut off all ties to save yourself the backward thinking.

 

It might be hard for some people to understand, but giving gifts gives people more joy than receiving them. So if the bituminous heart you have really wants to tell someone to stop giving, try really hard, harder than usually, to sympathize and understand this.

And Moddy's plate story is exactly why you keep taking these gifts, and I'm pretty sure he will never get rid of it.

 

There's the other extreme as well...

My wife and I have two kids... My wife's sister and her husband have two kids.

My wife's trainwreck of a brother, has no wife or kids, but told his parents years ago that they have to spend the same amount on him that they spend on our entire families, because otherwise, it's not fair.... He's 38. He doesn't need the money. But, he's a selfish twit.

 

My family does the same thing. The best thing is that you can put a little more thought into one gift instead of struggling to buy six.

 

He's pretty sure, Moddy.

 

I never understand people like that.