Gifts: Is there anyone else...

Robin Carlton

Robin Carlton

Owner & Candy Keeper
Staff member
...who doesn't do all the gifts for birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc thing?

Rocky and I have never really given each other gifts and I was wondering if I was alone. I always see threads where people ask for this or that for x day or event and we've just never done that.

We get wish lists and stuff from the kids for birthdays and holidays and make those a big deal for them, but we've never really done it for each other.

I think its mainly because if there is something either of us wants throughout the year we work together to make it happen, so those special "days" are just days to us, but I wanted to know if anyone else had a similar thang going with their person or if we are weird.

R
 
Ha... I was just thinking the same thing on that Mother's Day thread. We don't really do gifts, either. I LOVE receiving gifts, don't get me wrong, but I have come to the point where it's so much easier to just get myself what I want and when I want it. :) I used to bemoan holidays because Aaron is not a big gift-giver and I always forced him to get me something. It took the joy out of it... LOL!

We would usually prefer to do something together for anniversaries, V-day, birthdays, etc. like dinner out somewhere nice, a movie, a little mini-vacay. That kind of stuff. :)
 
no. not me. LOL
I love to receive gifts! I don't mind with dates, but I love gifts!
This year, with all going on about my family, I didn't celebrate my birthday (my favorite day!) and I'm still sad about it. Like a #6 years child, right? But that's me. lol I'm still waiting Di giving me something to my birthday. lol And he KNOWS I'm waiting. LOL
 
and don't need to be a big and expensive gift. I'm a simple person. but has to be wrapped. LOL
it's silly, but what can I do? (grow up, maybe? hahahah)
 
My husband and I have been married 10 years and together for 13 and up until this year he had only gotten me birthday & Christmas gifts a handful of times but surprised me with a sapphire/diamond ring for our 10-year anniversary. Normally he tells me though that I get whatever I want whenever I want so there is no need for gifts lol.
 
my love language is gifts... :D However, I rather have gift of time than an actual item. My hubby moans about the "halmark" holidays... but he will get me a little something... like a card or something. In the past when I was working it was the coach bags because he secretly loved that the other girls in the office were jelly of his husband thoughtfulness... haha. No longer work outside of the home... that purse train has stopped... :p
 
We don't usually do gifts. I still suggest wants just in case though. ;) The reality is........as the year goes by, we just buy what we want for the most part. No need for gifts. We get what we need and move on. Usually our holidays/special events are time spent together. Honestly, that just makes me happy since my hubby works a lot. Having that time is more important to me.
 
Rubia Padilha said:
no. not me. LOL
I love to receive gifts! I don't mind with dates, but I love gifts!
This year, with all going on about my family, I didn't celebrate my birthday (my favorite day!) and I'm still sad about it. Like a #6 years child, right? But that's me. lol I'm still waiting Di giving me something to my birthday. lol And he KNOWS I'm waiting. LOL
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I hear you on the birthday... for me it's the MOST important event to celebrate... :)
 
it's, right? I like the call, the dinner with the family, the date night with Di, the party with friends. and this year I have one a little bleh party. hahah but it's ok. next year I'll have MUCH more because now I have the "I didnt have last year" thing! lol
 
Haha... and see I think Birthdays are soooo weird. Rocky's family gets together for every birthday for each person and does dinner and gives gifts and makes a big deal about it and I think its totally bizarre to have a birthday party after you're 21 maybe?

I dont get why birthdays are a big deal to people. Of course I dont believe in funerals either, so I'm just a weirdo maybe.
 
We don't usually do gifts either. I always say for my bday all I want is to sleep in & not have to do any dishes all day! :D
 
my fiance and i didn't do anything last year. though, he moved here 3 days after my birthday last year, so he was just a really, really big present. then for his birthday, i cooked him his favorite dinner. i have a feeling it'll be the same deal this year, unless something changes.

my family makes huge deals out of birthdays. always has, always will. even my parents (dad turned 50, mom will be 50 next year) get parties and presents. at least, my mom's side makes a big deal. i like it. the traditional "birthday" celebration on our actual birthdays are that we choose where we go out to/what we have for dinner, and then there's usually dessert of some sort. then at the "family party" there's presents and things. it's never anything super huge, aside from big birthdays now that we're older. like, my 18th was huge, cause it was right after i graduated high school, so we did a combination party. then my 21st was big. same with my brother. and my dad got a big party for his 50th. mom will get the same thing. when my grandparents both turned 65, we had a big joint party for them.

i know that my fiance's family is so not like that though. but they're spread out around the country, too. i think that makes a difference.

i dunno. i like birthdays. i was brought up believing that they're a big deal. so i try to make it into a big deal.
 
hahah Di's family also do big things to birthdays! and I love that.
My fav birthday was a surprise party. I was on my PJs waiting to see what would happen and people started to yell from my backyard... was FUN! lol
 
We do gifts for birthdays, gifts for christmas, and usually small gifts for valentine's day- like I'll get him a movie and candy, he'll get my bath stuff and chocolate. We don't do anniversary gifts, just cards. Same for mother's day and father's day, though usually we buy a lot of alcohol and crap food for those two days since they are rough for us.
 
My hubby's family isn't into birthdays at all... they might call - if they remember... but otherwise it is just another day to them. I was taught that you celebrate everything, especially birthdays... a way to celebrate who you are and what you add to another's life. My mom had a close cousin that passed away in her 30's and before she went into surgery, she told my mom to always celebrate everything, never let a birthday, anniversary, or holiday go without celebrating, you never know what the next year will bring...

I, like Ashley, was raised where Birthdays are huge!! We do things on the day together... and we do what I want to do... my mom always calls me exactly at 11:29am, the time I was born, and talks about the day I was born and how much I have added to her life... then in the evening, we have cake (always homemade - that is more me... what I want and what I do for Jake - the others rather have store purchased from this great local bakery)... and then we open gifts. Usually nothing too big.

Since hubby is not a big birthday person, he doesn't get it... he is very worried that when Jake gets to be too big for my all out parties that my energy will be turned onto him. :D
 
We have done gifts for all occasions over the years, but we are now in our most-expensive time of our life (2 in college next year, 2 in braces, 3 cars and need 4, etc.) so we have cut WAY back on gifts for each other. Sometimes nothing at all, sometimes just a dinner, sometimes just time together.

But I do believe in gifts to each other, if possible. :)
 
I love receiving gifts, haha! I also love planning and giving gifts :)

But the hubs and I have sort of transitioned into gift giving whenever we feel like it. Sometimes it's on the day of the event, others early or later. Lots of times it's because we can't afford it. Also, the hubs is the WORST gift giver I've ever met; I've learned to give him a list or very definitely proclaim I love something and would he please give it to me as a gift? However, this doesn't necessarily mean the timing it right.

Case in point: after our shower heater got busted last year I commented that he's totally spoiled me for heaters, esp during the chillier months. So one of my birthday gifts this year is a new heater--which he gave me at the height of the summer this year :p
 
maryinaz said:
We have done gifts for all occasions over the years, but we are now in our most-expensive time of our life (2 in college next year, 2 in braces, 3 cars and need 4, etc.) so we have cut WAY back on gifts for each other. Sometimes nothing at all, sometimes just a dinner, sometimes just time together. But I do believe in gifts to each other, if possible. :)
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This. We look around and see people buying huge Christmas and birthday and Mother's Day gifts, but wow, some of those items are just out of our budget. I spent maybe $25 on scrapbooking supplies last weekend and I'm pretty sure that's my Mother's Day gift. :D
 
I LOVE birthdays! I even hung up balloons and streamers for Adam's birthday in March even though it was only the two of us. :D

We only do gifts for birthdays and Christmas and we tend to use those for our big individual purchases. We don't do any of the smaller random holidays like anniversaries or Valentines Day.
 
we're the same way Robin, we don't do gifts at all for any holiday or special days... if there is something we really want and it's in the budget we just get it and if it's not in the budget we talk about it and see what we need to do to make it happen... we joke that the kitchen remodel is our Christmas and Birthday gift to each other for the next 20 years LOL
 
i'm like you, robin, we don't do gifts at all. we do b-days and xmas for the kids - but not for each other ... we really just don't care about gifts b/c we buy what we want throughout the year. we are going to *hopefully* use our 10 year anniversary to go on a trip to asia - but that's more of an excuse to go on a big trip than anything else. i don't think we've celebrated any of the holidays with gifts since we've been married ;)

one year we didn't even remember our anniversary - my husband's grandmother sent us an email saying happy anniversary and replied telling her she had the wrong people LOL - it took us about an hour afterwards to figure out that she was right :)
 
We're not big gifters here either. If we do gifts, it's more like: "Hey, I saw this thing that I wanted, so I bought it, and we can call it my xxxx gift. Sound good?"

We don't celebrate ANYTHING really big. I have a big family, so if we get together for Christmas or a birthday or anything else, the massive amounts of people and chaos are enough to make it feel special.

My mom and dad are really big on keeping things simple, and we never celebrated holidays big or got fantastic presents for our birthdays (with seven kids, money was extremely tight), so I'm used to that and don't mind it at all.

So, yeah, no Mother's Day presents going out from me. But, I'll call and tell peeps that I love them. I want people to know that I love them, so I try to acknowledge special days . . . just not with gifts.
 
We're not necessarily big gift givers, sometimes there are gifts and sometimes not, when there are presents they're usually small or something we decide to buy together. I love to celebrate though so I pretty much acknowledge all holidays in some small way just because I think it's fun.
 
dh and I don't do anything for birthdays or anniversary for ourselves either..My bday (12/12) and our anniversary (12/31) are so close to Christmas that we usually just get a big family gift for Christmas..we do do gifts for the kid's birthdays though
 
We do celebrate everyone's birthday in our immediate family with dinner, cake, gifts. I like celebrating birthdays because I think it's nice to give everyone their own special day and you can really tailor it to the specific person.

On the other hand, while we do Christmas gifts, I've been trying to get the adults to agree to stop that since it just seems like an artificial obligation to have to buy and swap gifts on that day once/year. To me, the meaning of the holiday (and of the gifts themselves) is lost when you are "expected" to buy gifts because society (and big industry) tell you that you should. DH and I do not exchange gifts for Valentines Day or our anniversary or other holidays. I don't like the merchandisers telling me that I have to buy things for people on certain days to show that I love them. So, we usually go out for dinner for those days, but don't exchange gifts.
 
We use birthdays, etc. as an excuse to buy each other things we wouldn't buy ourselves. I usually buy DH clothes because he won't go shopping for them himself, and I usually get some kitchen stuff because I just don't take the time to buy it when I can get by anyway. So I'm not sure our gift-giving really qualifies as exciting. lol!
 
We don't really do gifts either. Well, we do something small at Christmas, and it's just because we open gifts as a family. For birthdays though, it tends to be just a small "token" gift which is really from the kids, as opposed to buying gifts for each other. We don't do it for any other "holidays". I think birthdays, etc are just for kids :D
 
Like Rebecca, my mom ALWAYS made/makes a big deal out of birthdays so I completely grew up thinking everyone did. Then I met my husband, whose family puts a check in a card and calls it done...blah!!

I've learned to accept the fact that Jay will never go as "all out" for me as I do for him and L.J., but I still expect it to be my day and I get to pick dinner, a list of things I might want, etc.

As far as other holidays, sometimes we do gifts, sometimes we don't. Sometimes it depends on if he did some electrical work for our favorite local jewelry store. HAHAHA!!!

I have on the other hand, raised L.J. like my mom raised me and he thinks you should get a gift for EVERY holiday.
 
ltarbox said:
We're not big gifters here either. If we do gifts, it's more like: "Hey, I saw this thing that I wanted, so I bought it, and we can call it my xxxx gift. Sound good?"
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This is us. Sometimes we get that thing a month or more early. Usually its more of get what we want, when we want/when we can afford it.
Though my husband is good about saying Happy _____________ and getting me a card usually. He wants me to know he appreciates me and what not, but I don't feel the need for big fancy gifts. I think just acknowledging it is enough.
 
Honestly, the only one who usually remembers my birthday is my son, and he always want to get me a gift, which I appreciate. He also does Mother's Day present.

True story, this year on my sister's birthday, I called my brother to remind him to call her and say happy birthday and he asked me, have I ever called you on your birthday and I said, why no you haven't and he said "I feel really bad about that sis, you know I love you, right?" and I almost cried. Nice gift and it wasn't even my birthday. :)
 
Robin Carlton said:
This is a super interesting thread that has confirmed that I am indeed an odd duck LOL.
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I'm with you 100%. We are exactly the same way. I have NEVER understood why adults get excited about their own birthdays.

I do have a theory on why my family is the way we are:
Landon and I have summer birthdays, Michael's birthday is during spring break, and Avery's birthday is during fall break, so none of us was ever in school with friends to celebrate with...was just another day.

I don't even post my birthday on FB...not because of the age but because I just really don't do birthdays. And I rarely wish others a happy birthday simply because it's not something to which I pay much attention...not because I'm an a$$.

And we're the same with all the holidays. It's even a big joke that we never remember our anniversary when it rolls around either.
 
And I'll follow that up and say I also recognize that some people show their love through gifts...it's their love language, and I respect that.
 
Gotta say, I warned my family that in 4 years when I turn 50, they dang well better remember and I want the works. Party, presents, cake, just a big ol fuss over me. I have never had a birthday party in my life and by golly, I want one for the big 50. Or else. LOL
 
krystalhartley said:
I do have a theory on why my family is the way we are:
Landon and I have summer birthdays, Michael's birthday is during spring break, and Avery's birthday is during fall break, so none of us was ever in school with friends to celebrate with...was just another day.
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And see I have a summer birthday and I thought maybe I was so hyped up on them because of that reason. I had to really work at it to have a party with friends and stuff since we weren't in school.
 
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