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by Y_Y
1834 days ago
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I don't like having a birthday either, and I will sometimes give people presents, but I absolutely never want any. This seems to cause friction though, and maybe represents some kind of personality issue. I don't know why I'm like this or what it might mean though. For the record, I did secret Santa a couple of times. First time went to a ton of effort to send a nice, appropriate thing (House of Leaves colour hardback) and got nothing. Next time though I sent some crappy thing and received a giant box of Simpsons socks. That was actually really cool. |
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Maybe I'm biased, but if expressing your non-consent of celebrating something about you that you didn't chose causes friction, that's not your personality issue. A desire to give everyone presents even if they don't want them is the personality issue.
Receiving a present creates a social obligation to deliver a present later and may also be a conflict of interest. My spouse was an elected official (board of supervisors of a tiny government agency) and it was great because I had a concrete reason to refuse gifts; anything from not close family over a tiny threshold had a reporting obligation, and anything over a not so big threshold was prohibited; nobody wanted to participate in reporting, so no gifts.