A gift in February is worth twenty at Christmas, and should be valued twenty times as much.

...I feel a rant coming on

..there, just spared you

No problem

mostly its a hassel, but it can be fun when you find the right stuff with the right people.

I don’t like it much either. If it were limited to small, symbolic gifts it wouldn’t be so bad, but the practice gets way out of hand IMO.

I do not like it at all. I bought gifts for my daughter during holidays when she was little but just small and symbolic gifts. I stopped holiday gifts for her when she was 10. We husband-wife never ever gave gifts to each other and anyone. My mother who used to visit from overseas used to be angry when we children gave her gifts, including greeting cards in the U.S. We stopped immediately.

We have gone overboard with this gift giving non-sense. The capitalists have done a good job of hooking us into Boss's Day, Secretaries Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's day and 100 other days. They are doing their job and we are just rolling in without thinking what the xxx we are doing.

If you love or care about somebody, do something meaningful. Cook, do laundry, wash their car, pay their bill, spend time with them etc. There are 100 things in life that can help. The true feelings are not in gifts, it is in doing. It is not in words and greeting cards, it is in actions.

People know that most stores charge more with deceptive pricing of padded pricing, free shipping and false discounts. We still buy 11th hour gifts just for the sake of giving gifts. Then there is a buyer's remorse in January but we do things just because everybody else is doing and we want to be normal.

If we can break out of the powerful religion, breaking out of this non-sense should be much easier. I do not know why atheists and freethinkers fall for these holiday customs.

Gifts... I like them... Giving and receiving... But to me, it's not a ritual... There's thought involved in selecting the right gift for the right person... I don't just go through the motions....

This might sound shitty but I don't really ”do” gifts in general. I buy shit
for people all the time but I don't think of it that way. You'll likely never get a birthday gift or card, I just don't celebrate dates of any kind.

I have no problem with it even though I don't participate in them any longer.