COMMENT Quality over quantity best guide for gifts

Quantity or quality? That is the question. It’s a question to which we think the answer is obvious (quality, duh) — until it comes to Christmas shopping.

I took part in an interesting discussion recently.

A mother asked an internet forum (truncated for simplicity): “My 14-year-old son asked for a $160 soccer ball for Christmas this year. He said it’s the only thing he wants, even after I told him it would use the majority of our budget for his gifts. I’m struggling with the idea of it, I think he’ll be disappointed to only get a single soccer ball. Should I get it and risk him being disappointed?”

Everyone was trying to convince the mother that she should listen to her son. If he’s asked for one and only one specific item, and one within the mother’s budget at that, he’s going to be disappointed if he doesn’t get it regardless of how many other presents there are under the tree.

Many people shared their own childhood stories of disappointing Christmases where they, like this mother’s son, asked for one special gift for Christmas and didn’t receive it, and instead were given a dragon’s hoard of often expensive gifts they didn’t ask for.

I’m not talking about the spoilt teenagers throwing a tantrum about being given the wrong brand of gold-plated $5000 cellphone either. These were grown adults reminiscing about the year they asked for a single item that they had been coveting for months, and were instead given everything but the item because their parents had decided quantity or the monetary value was more important.

One adult remembered the year she asked only for a specific pack of charcoal pencils for sketching, some she’d admired a classmate using. Instead, her parents bought her and her sister identical sets of expensive equipment for her sister’s hobby, sewing, something she’d never been interested in. Her parents hadn’t wanted to spend more money on one child than the other, so had opted to buy them both the same gift.

Twenty years on, she still remembers her parents’ anger at seeing the unwanted sewing machine still in its box months later, and her own disappointment at not getting what she’d asked for — a gift that, while expensive for what it was, was still far cheaper than what she’d ended up getting. What was the point of that gift? It’s easy enough to say “be grateful for what you’re given”. But gifts should be about the recipient, not the giver. And spending money purely for the sake of spending money surely isn’t about the recipient.

When did Christmas become an exercise in wasteful gifts?

Take a walk through any shopping centre today and you’ll see stores filled floor to ceiling with cheap and disposable clutter. Aisles and aisles of frivolous decorations, toys that’ll break in 10 minutes, novelty stocking fillers that’ll be good for a laugh and not much more.

I fear they’re all going to end up in the ocean one day, one way or another. All to fill our need of buying… stuff. To achieve some sort of quota imposed only by ourselves. Buying for the sake of buying, giving for the sake of giving.

Bring back meaningful gifts, I say. Ask your friends and relatives for wishlists, and find one quality item you know they’ll love. If that means your gift isn’t a surprise, so be it. It’s better than buying clutter.

Not that I’m knocking surprises, mind. It’s awesome to be genuinely surprised and grateful for the gift you unwrap. But if there’s any doubt in your mind at all about whether your gift will be treasured, that’s probably a good sign not to buy it.

Here’s my advice, for what it’s worth: Look for the items with the potential to be treasured forever — the toys that will survive the rigours of childhood, the handmade one-offs, the quality items that you know the recipient would never buy themselves and will appreciate doubly for that reason.

That way, even if you misjudge and the recipient doesn’t like what you selected, at least it can be regifted or donated to someone who will appreciate it instead of throwing it out. That doesn’t mean you have to break the bank buying from boutiques either.

Most big box stores these days have sections with wooden toys, for example. You could even give them a lick of paint in the kid’s favourite colour and make them unique if that’s your style. Or go in the opposite direction and visit a craft store or market for something handmade

What we choose to give the people we love and appreciate should, in the words of Marie Kondo, spark joy. Gifts shouldn’t be a burden, they should add something positive to the recipient’s life if even in the smallest of ways. Quality over quantity, every time.