Regifting

Dec. 4th, 2003 01:06 pm
magid: (Default)
[personal profile] magid
Yesterday I saw a Macy's ad on a bus with the slogan "Regifting is for wimps". My initial reaction: no, it's not, and what an obvious sort of commercial, playing off people's insecurities. And then in today's Globe there's an article on regifting, the etiquette thereof, etc. Perhaps it's my thriftiness/cheapness/frugality coming to the fore, but it just doesn't seem like that big a deal.

I've always thought that if someone gave me a gift that I didn't need/ already had one/ was the wrong size and not returnable/ was inconvenient in some way or another (Where to put that life-sized stuffed baby elephant?), it was perfectly acceptable to give it to someone else, if I thought the next recipient would enjoy it. I don't know that I'd go tell the original giver, but if they asked about it, I would tell them why I'd regifted, and that would be that.

Of course, it matters more to me what other people think about this one, since you/they would be the pool of recipients and/or original givers. So.... what do you think about regifting? Is it perfectly ok? Is it ok only as long as no one twigs on to what you're doing? Is it ok only if there's a significant amount of time before regifting? Or is it completely anathema?

Date: 2003-12-05 07:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] magid.livejournal.com
I was thinking of calligraphed v. printed books now, not really in historical context; of course, before the press, you took what you could get, and even after, the cachet of hand work and detail has a lot going for it (especially compared to some of the early complicated German fonts in use :-).

Moss Haggaddah

It was orginally commissioned; I don't know where the originals are, with the guy who paid for them (Moss? Or is that the calligrapher? I don't know.) or in a museum. However, there have been books printed with facsimiles; I'd assume some library with a biggish Judaica section would have a copy.

bath day

A wet day, indeed! Happily, the snowstorm isn't starting until late tonight, so it won't get in the way of Shabbat prep :-). 3-6 inches are predicted, of wet snow, too. It ought to be interesting... At least I won't have a commute in it. Happy geshem-ing :-)

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