a holiday lesson

Good morning, class. Today’s lesson for The Holiday Season is “Why you shouldn’t give monetary gifts.” Pay attention, there may be a quiz.
Year after year, Miss Manners and other etiquette mavens tell us that monetary gifts are impolite, and yet no one listens. The gift givers like to write checks or tuck a little cash in an envelope because it is easy and after all, who doesn’t want money as a gift? The recipients prefer money because they are tired of getting useless crap that takes up space and that they don’t feel they can throw away because what if the giver finds out? So a lot of people agree that money is the best gift for weddings and birthdays and Christmas.

Here is an instructive story about why money is not always the ideal gift.
My grandparents have given money to my brothers and sister and I as Christmas gifts for a long time, since my mom got tired of having to find gifts for us that seemed like stuff my grandmother might give, and wrap them in different paper and pretend that my grandmother bought them. (Not that we didn’t all know, but we kept up the pretense.)
My married brother has long enjoyed the joke of pretending that money-giving relatives tucked more cash/bigger checks into his envelopes than they did for the rest of us. This has become one of those old family jokes that aren’t particularly funny but refuse to die.
Only this year, apparently my grandmother really did give all of us kids varying amounts of money. We found this out when my youngest brother remarked that my grandparents must be on a budget these days, since they only gave him $10. My sister said no, she got $20, and was he sure that there weren’t two $10 bills stuck together? My other brother alleged he got $40 for himself and his wife (although it is really impossible to believe anything he says on this topic).
My youngest brother, who is 21, turned to me and asked me how much money I got from my grandparents. And I was smart enough to lie and tell him that, damn, I only got $10 too. And maybe the extra money was meant for the great-grandkids, so he shouldn’t feel hurt about it.
My sister and I were talking about this later on with my mom, because it seemed rather hurtful. Surely my grandparents must realize that we might discuss our gifts with one another. Why would they give everyone varying amounts of money? They gave me $25, actually … it makes no sense unless you suppose they were rewarding us for our attentions to them during the year. My grandmother had been in the hospital recently, and I had sent her some nice cards (amusing digression: the cards were LisaNH’s swag from JournalCon Austin, featuring very pretty photos of her amazing garden, although of course my grandmother didn’t know any of the backstory on that). My youngest brother, on the other hand, is rarely around for family gatherings, because he’s either working or in school, and he’s in that blunt-speaking college-student age, which doesn’t always agree with older relatives.
Well, my grandmother has long been eccentric, to say the least, so none of this was much of a surprise. But then my sister mentioned the check she’d received from my great-aunt and uncle, and I was entirely surprised—I hadn’t received any money from them. I figured they weren’t giving us money anymore, we were too old, and that was certainly understandable. But it turned out that they’d given the other kids checks. They gave me a small Christmas decoration, the kind that is made from a styrofoam ball.
Now that hurt. I hadn’t done a thing to insult or hurt my great-aunt and uncle during the year, I have always been pleasant and kind to them, and I always give them a Christmas gift. I try to visit them whenever I am in town. It wasn’t as though the Christmas decoration was something they particularly thought I’d like, it was the kind of gift you give generically to various acquaintances.
I would understand if my great-aunt had given my sister something particularly nice, because my sister lives near them and visits them a lot and my aunt enjoys helping her out whenever she can. But apparently I was the only one left out.
My mom tried to smooth things over. She said my great-aunt had been somewhat confused on Christmas Eve, what with so many people around and her own children in town and gifts flying everywhere, and perhaps she simply forgot. My mom assured me it wasn’t intentional. And indeed, my great-aunt and uncle gave no signs that they weren’t happy with me for any reason.
You have to understand, this is not a greed issue. I have enough money for whatever I need. These older relatives really shouldn’t feel like they ought to give us any presents at all, and if they decided not to do so, I would understand. I already feel like I get too much stuff at Christmas, and perhaps this is a sign that I should tell my mom to talk to the relatives next year ahead of time, and drop a hint that we kids aren’t expecting gifts any more, we just like seeing them at Christmas. My mom is very good at hinting that sort of thing in a polite and positive way.
I don’t care about having the money, but I still feel slightly hurt about this mix-up with my great-aunt and uncle. These are relatives I care about a lot, and some part of me still wonders what the hell I did to get knocked off the A-list. Also, I am somewhat angry with my grandparents for giving my baby brother a noticeably lesser gift this year. That’s a pretty crummy thing to do to someone who’s barely even grown up.
If we’d all received Christmas decorations for presents, or little trifling gifts—anything without the specific monetary value found in checks or gift certificates—this wouldn’t be a problem. After all, even if someone seems to have a more lavish gift than you do, you can always shrug and suppose that it was on sale. You don’t know for certain that the relatives decided to slight you in some way for some reason. And as I said before, I would have been perfectly happy with no gifts at all beyond a hug and a “Merry Christmas” from the relatives.
So this is my little lesson for today. Avoid giving people money for presents. It will only lead to confusion, and hurt feelings, and long-term difficulties that you can’t even predict.