Barbara told me this:
"We have secret prayer partners in church. One prayer partner regifted his gift to his secret prayer partner- Who had his name - they were each others prayer partner. LOL-"
And Brenda shared this little tale...
"I opened a wedding gift - only to find a second card inside the box . . addressed to . . you guessed it, the re-gifter. If you remember to remove all cards, regifting can be a good thing."
So the moral of these stories would be......IF YOU'RE GOING TO REGIFT, DO SO VERY, VERY CAREFULLY!
Some of you feel that regifting is just really not an acceptable practice. With the possibility of being found out and causing hurt feelings, you just don't think it's worth the risk.
Some of you think it's simple laziness.
Or a result of being a tightwad.
I guess that's possible, too.
The truth of the matter is that it is totally up to the individual. Chances are good that no one is ever going to know that the fondue pot
you just gave as a wedding present to your old college roommate Sue (who LOVED the fondue party your cousin threw for your wedding shower!) was the one that Great Aunt Clara
gave you last Christmas.
They also will probably never know that Great Aunt Clara has given you a fondue pot every Christmas for the last five years.
See my point?
Sometimes regifting is practical. You receive a gift you don't need or know you will never, ever use. You also know that returning the gift will be either time consuming and impossible due to not having the receipt, or you'll have to pay a restocking fee, or hurtful to Great Aunt Clara who is 83, overly-sensitive, and won't remember that she bought you a fondue pot in the first place. But you do know someone who would just LOVE this gift! Someone who would use it and appreciate it!
Then everybody is happy.
Sue got a great fondue pot.
(This is her celebrating.)You got one more thing you know you'll never use out of your way.
(See how much neater your closet is?) Aunty is starting to make next year's Christmas list and she thinks you'd LOVE a fondue pot!
I don't see the harm.
With that being said, I'll be honest regarding my own regifting closet.
I have given away exactly ONE item from that closet. It was a set of candles that I was given by a friend. They were a strong scent that doesn't appeal to me (and gives me a tremendous headache) and I gave them to another friend (not personally acquainted with the original giver, I might add) who simply adores that scent and mentioned in passing that she was going to have to go buy some more candles because she'd used up the ones she had bought from our school fundraiser. I told her exactly why I had the set, why I would never use them, and pleaded with her to take them and put them to good use. I didn't wrap them up and present them as if I had gone out and shopped for hours trying to find the perfect gift, and I also knew that the original giver and the new recipient would not cross paths. I have no desire to hurt the feelings of the giver, but knowing her as I do I also doubt she'd have any problem with what I did.
So that's more the way regifting works for me. I enjoy shopping for just the right gift for someone too much to just raid my closet and grab the first thing I can reach.
I guess that's why it's tough for me to understand why some folks can buy presents that show absolutely no consideration for the recipient's wants or needs, likes or dislikes whatsoever. I mean, really. Take a look at this.
Christmas 1987. These were my gifts from my (then) husband. I'll admit that he did put the toilet seat INSIDE the hamper and put a bow on the top. Special, huh? Not so funny then, but time has softened the sting of it and I sure get a good laugh out of it now. How thoughtful was THAT???
(And no, to answer your next question....I didn't regift those!) ;)
