All the ways I did gift-giving wrong

I am, at this very moment, polishing off the last of my Thanksgiving leftovers and browsing gift guides. (I know.)

I’m looking through these guides not because I have any intention of using them, but because I enjoy the cultural curiosity of it all. Does this list really have the best gifts under $25? Or the perfect picks for the mother-in-law who has it all? Could I get on Ana Gasteyer’s gifting level? Are the people over at Wirecutter OK?? (Lol, they are not. They link out endlessly to Amazon products then write 2,500 words on the sad state of online returns.)

But I’m also looking at gift guides in a sort of “you can’t hurt me anymore” way. I am recovering from years of eschewing the act of gift-giving, at least as much as I could. And I have — on more than one occasion — gaped at gift guides in the hopes of being delivered from the agony of needing just one more stocking stuffer/glassware set/quality sweatshirt to round things out.

Gifting has just never been my love language. It ranks somewhere far below Quality Time and a hair above Telling Me I Look Nice, Despite the Truth. And because it’s not terribly important for me — and because I was able to tone down the gift-giving with family and exes — my gift-giving muscle weakened and nearly atrophied entirely.

And then I started dating a Grade A, all-beef Santa Claus.

Dave gives thoughtfully. He gives generously. He mixes homemade with store-bought. He buys what I would want, and takes careful but considered risks. He counts it as a failure if he doesn’t make me cry at least once on Christmas morning. He is merciless in his gift-giving.

While he seems to genuinely enjoy it, I’ve nearly broken into holiday hives trying to get on his level (I can’t. Last year I made him a comic book of all the ways I leave shoes around the house??).

Emiliana Simon-Thomas, of University of California, Berkeley, who studies the neuroscience and psychology of compassion, kindness, and gratitude, explained to the American Psychological Association that gift-giving — particularly when the recipient is someone close to us — activates key reward pathways in our brain… so long as we don’t let anxiety take away the joy of the occasion.

“If you are really stressed, that is overwhelming your ability to anticipate or savor the experience, then dopamine and oxytocin aren’t what’s being released in your brain,” she told the APA.

Without realizing it, I had stopped finding the pleasure in gift-giving. I was only feeling the nerves around disappointing someone or spending an appropriate amount of money or — absolute worst of all — the potential of having to watch a person mentally scroll through the least-rude facial expression they can use upon opening a Bad Gift.

BUT NOT THIS YEAR. This year, I am very simply enjoying myself by not worrying: Not worrying about getting it just right or spending the appropriate amount. The latter was surprisingly easy: The trick was to just not spend on myself for a while. The problem with a lot of the gift guides, sales, etc. is that you just want to snag the stuff you would like. Do you think I’m receiving marketing emails from places that Dave wants to shop? No! We’re only getting coupon codes and special discounts from the websites where we have shopped for ourselves. And I don’t think he’s in the market for redness-reducing SPF moisturizer from Dermstore.

The concern that I wouldn’t get it right was trickier to overcome. When I started digging around on the topic a bit, I had to laugh at the sheer amount of research that has been devoted to gift-giving. I have to imagine it all started with a professor who absolutely FLOPPED when he bought his wife (her wife? The good doctor might be a woman!) a vacuum cleaner for her birthday.

There are studies on how people opt for preference-matching gifts versus sentimental gifts because they think it’s a safer choice (even though people prefer the sentimental). There are studies that offer a “Framework for Understanding Errors in Gift Giving” (givers focus on appreciation in the moment of giving, whereas recipients focus on how valuable a gift will be once owned). There’s even an academic paper literally titled, “Sometimes It’s Okay to Give a Blender.”

This is to say: I may never get it right. All the gift guides in the world, all the thoroughly researched studies or psychological analysis can’t save us from ourselves. So I decided not to sweat it and just have a good time with it. Remember when we were kids at those little Santa’s Workshops filled with crummy, impractical little gifts? You’d wander around with your envelope that mom put $20 in so you could pick out some junk for your siblings and parents. You didn’t sweat it! You happily browsed the selection and picked out canvas work gloves that had DAD written on them because your dad worked and was conveniently also named DAD. He liked them! They were practical! (This is a true story. He also kept the $5 money clip I got him from another Santa’s Workshop until it finally snapped many years later.)

So far, when shopping for Dave, I’ve bought things that are fun and things that are utilitarian. I’ve gotten creative, I’ve listened to his hints (shocking!), and I’ve dabbled with sentimentality. I even made myself a little project — and I love a little project, because I get to see how far I can take a fully insane idea (time always reels me in quite a bit).

I have no idea how many of my gifts will go over, but I had so much fun picking them out, buying them, or making them that I have to assume they won’t be total misses. So far my favorite was creating a custom advent calendar. For 24 days this month, Dave gets to open a tiny card or little paper bag with a treat. I didn’t go as crazy with it as I initially planned (again, I have no concept of time when it comes to the hours needed for execution), but it was a blast to put together. Was I sitting on the floor of the office at 9 p.m. Sunday night, fumbling with a typewriter to design custom coupons? Yes! But if my mother — a very good gift-giver — taught me anything, it’s that a good holiday requires that you stay up late to toil while you swear a little bit (a lot).

Psst… give the gift of a Hater’s Guide subscription to yourself or another!!!!