Gift Classifications
All gifts given during an occasion where gifts are exchanged fall into these categories:
- Genuine Gift: With minimal input from you the giver located the gift on their own initiative based on their perception of it as something you might like. In other words: you didn’t ask for anything but you got something.
- Line-Item Gift: The gift was something someone got you just so they could cross you off their shopping list. Gift cards fall into this category. Re-gifts also fall into this category but occasionally those can be disguised as genuine gifts.
- Trade Gift: You told the giver “I want X” and the giver told you “I want Y” and the two of you went out and bought the corresponding items for each other. This is dumb. You might as well just have bought yourself the thing you wanted and told the giver to do likewise. This also applies if you gave a gift card and got one in return (dumb.)
- Anti-Gift: A gift that actually puts you through an inordinate amount of trouble and/or expense in order to actually use it. These are somewhat rare. For example: someone gives you early season Cubs tickets. After dropping money on transit/parking, beer, and food while freezing your ass off you decide you would rather have watched the game at home. Bonus anti-gift points if it's a day game and you have to skip work and get chewed out for it.
- Self-Gift: Another rare one. At a grab bag gift exchange you select the gift that you contributed. This was your plan from the start. I suppose the phenomenon of people buying something for themselves, wrapping it, and putting “from Santa” on it falls under this category too.
- Self-Serving gift. These are not rare. Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer gives Marge a bowling ball for her birthday (with finger holes for himself drilled into it?) That’s a good example. Giving your wife a vacuum cleaner would be another one.
- Selfless gift: You gave something but expect nothing in return. This also counts as a “Genuine” gift but gets its own category since there was technically no exchange.
I’m sure I missed some but I’m out of ideas for now.