It's that time of the year. You go to your mailbox, anticipating something great. You open the mailbox and it's stuffed! Excitement! Then you pull it all out of there, and 99% of the total weight is due to catalogs.
Yesterday's catalog count: 7
Fossil, some travel catalog, Hearth Song, Lands' End, some financial catalog, Bass Pro Shops, The Company Store, JC Penney. The stack of catalogs is 2.5 inches high, and it's all going in the garbage can without one look.
I do most of my Christmas shopping online, so I don't sit around perusing catalogs. I remember going through the Sears catalog as a child, but I never got anything I actually wanted out of there, so catalog looking doesn't hold some special place in my heart or anything.
To me, gift giving has gotten kind of difficult, and in a way pointless. These days, people buy what they want when they want. You don't have to wait around or save up for any reason. You just go out to Target, Best Buy, the mall - and get it when you need it. So that makes deciding on what to give someone at holiday season especially difficult. Some people think that the solution is to set up online wish lists or registries. I'm not sure I'm 100% OK with that either. It kind of kills the surprise.
I don't know what the solution to the yearly gift dilemma is, but it definitely isn't to stuff my mailbox full of printed materials that I have to throw out.
2 comments:
I agree about the pointless giving. Two years ago Joe's adult family exchange turned out to be a lot of gift cards. I said we might as well pass a $50 bill around the room. Last year, at my suggestion, each family pitch in $50 and we bought a water buffalo through heifer project. Then we had a $2 limit Dirty Santa exchange. It was hilarious and much more enjoyable than gift cards.
Joe does give me a great gift every year. He gives me homemade gift certificates for 5 hours per month to scrapbook. Time without kids for me is the best gift I can imagine. (I love my kids but everybody needs a break).
I loved the Sears Wish Book as a kid, but now rarely glance at a catalog. Thank God for a healthy recycling program here in Fairhope. There are even large paper recycling bins inside the post office for junk mail.
I do love my Amazon wish list, though. I like to get the things that I really do want instead of something that will never be used. But I am also the worst at getting what I want when I want it. It drives Lorraine crazy.
There was a year when Lorraine & I tried to get the family gift-swap to be converted into a charity donation. It didn't go over well.
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