Ode To The Bad Gift Giver

It's the most difficult time of the year

This is my official holiday season ode to a very specific, very misunderstood community: the bad gift-givers. To be clear, “bad” does not refer to the re-gifters, the ones who pass off free company merch, or the novelty-socks-with-a-bad-pun crowd. I mean the people who take gift-giving seriously, who want to get it right, make a small annual promise to themselves to improve, but somehow still end up in the same position every December.

I mean us: the quieter, more tragic subtype. The people who sincerely and desperately want to be thoughtful, but whose brains refuse to store information unless it’s literally examinable. And because I’m aware of this flaw, I attempt to compensate by entering what I call “listening season” in mid-to-late October. It’s when I suddenly become alert to every passing comment about what people like, so I can gather intelligence for my holiday mission.

So, Saint-readers, consider this a pep talk to anyone who has ever tried their absolute best and still ended up giving a present (like a candle or a gift card) that essentially whispered: I really do care about you, I just, for reasons unknown and in this exact moment, remember nothing about you. 

The thing is, we’re not careless or memory-deficient, just seasonally overwhelmed. If anything, we care too much. I think that’s the real curse here. We overthink ourselves straight into holiday paralysis because we want so badly for the gift to say “I know you,” but the pressure of that sentence makes our entire personality and memory dissolve right away. 

What makes all of this worse is that we all know someone who is simply so good at this. They’ll hand someone a gift that feels exactly right, and they make it look like the obvious choice. No hesitation and no second-guessing, just naturally talented at gift-giving. A skill I admire and genuinely cannot relate to. Somehow, these people never seem the slightest bit stressed about it. They’re not sitting in shops spiralling into self-analysis; they just pick something and move on with their lives.

What actually happens is simple: we panic, and we get emotional stage fright. The second the stakes get high, our entire brains wipe themselves clean and forget everything about our favourite people. We’re wandering around shops thinking, Do they drink tea? Have they ever owned socks? What do they do with their time?

Part of this panic is the looming fear of getting it embarrassingly wrong. Every so often, we get a burst of confidence and convince ourselves to go beyond the usual candle-and-gift-card routine and buy something radical … like fancy bath salts. Very off-script. And then, of course, we find out they don’t even own a bathtub. Or we pick out a book that turns out to be the exact one they slogged through last summer. This is why, inevitably, we crawl right back to the safety options. Like stationery. Mugs. Lavender soap. The Switzerland of gifts: aggressively neutral.

Being a student only makes it more ridiculous. You spend the end of the semester buried in exams and deadlines, and then suddenly you’re going home for the holidays and expected to produce heartfelt, personality-revealing gifts for all the people you love … all while your bank account is unfortunately hovering somewhere in the double digits…or the singles.

This year, I’m officially putting my foot down and trying a little harder. I’ve had a “Gift Ideas” Notes app list since the first week of November. As I’m writing this, it’s currently empty. But, frankly, that’s more infrastructure than I’ve ever had, so I’m absolutely taking this win. Something will go on there eventually.

Can we overcome this? No one knows. I don’t think we’re going to wake up one December as the sort of people who effortlessly source the perfect, most thoughtful gift in the room. We probably won’t ever give the gift someone brings up years later, and that’s okay. Because the intention is real, even if the execution is slightly questionable.

Until this transformation is complete, please understand this: every questionable gift comes from a very sincere place. A disorganised and easily overwhelmed place, but sincere nonetheless. If you unwrap something this year and can’t immediately identify what it is or why I thought it was for you, just know: I meant well. And honestly, for the bad gift-giver, that’s the closest we ever get to perfection.

Illustration by Eve Fishman