Rethink the Gift Card

This came across my email today and I thought I'd share:

Holidays have rapidly devolved into what amounts to an exchange of cash. A gift card says nothing about the personality of the recipient -- but it says lots about the giver.

By

Liz Pulliam Weston

Gift cards are incredibly popular. They're also an oxymoron.
A gift, ideally, says, "I thought about you. I considered your likes and dislikes, your needs and wants, your dreams and desires, and found you this token of my esteem that I hope will delight you."

A gift card says, "There! Checked you off my list."

It's not just me that says so. Judith Martin, the doyenne of etiquette known to millions as

Miss Manners, dismisses gift certificates -- and, by extension, gift cards -- as "a pathetic compromise convenient to people who do not trust their judgment about selecting the right present for those whose tastes they ought to know."

Think about it. Would a lover, in the flush of romance, lean close to the object of his affection and present … a gift card? Would proud grandparents present the latest addition to the family with … a gift card? Would your best and closest friend, the one you've known for years, who's stuck with you through the roller-coaster ride of life, walk into your hospital room and give you … a gift card?

(If the answer to any of those questions is yes, by the way, you need to start hanging with a better class of people.)

Yet gift cards continue their relentless spread:
Last year, 74.3% of respondents surveyed told a National Retail Federation survey they planned to buy at least one gift card, up from 69.9% the year before.
Half of respondents (50.1%) said they would like to receive a gift card, up from 41.3% two years earlier.

The younger you are, the more likely you are to be delighted by a gift card: 82% of Americans under 44 said they appreciated receiving gift cards, according to a national survey by Coinstar, purveyor of coin-counting machines and gift cards.

The death of shame

Many young people are so enamored with gift cards, with being "empowered to make their own choices," as one retailer laughably put it, that they don't even realize what they're missing.
Older people might, but hey, they're busy, cards are convenient, so what's the harm?
The harm is that the art of gift-giving is quickly devolving into an entirely commercial exchange. How much longer until we simply start thrusting wads of dollar bills at each other?
Some people, apparently, would be delighted with that prospect. While researching party themes for my daughter's upcoming celebration, I stumbled across a posting by a woman who proudly included the horrifying words "monetary gifts would be much appreciated" on her 3 year-old child's invitations. She went on to explain that "I wanted money as gifts for my daughter's savings and for us to buy bigger toys, like a big kitchen and a Barbie Jeep that she wanted, instead of guests giving her small toys."

It's official. Shame is dead.

*A Note From the Blogger...

I think it depends on the gift card!