Anticipation

[kejedo]

From MSN News: This year, 77% of consumers plan to return some of their gifts and nearly 20% expect to return more than half, according to a survey of 15,800 consumers by Oracle, an online retail platform. 

Trying to comprehend the mindset:

Receivers:  - not only are people so presuming as to expect those obligatory gifts, but by a huge majority are also expecting to turn them back in for, well, something or anything else. 

Givers: Those choosing and buying gifts for others are likely to expect that their choices will be a perfect match to the size or type of item that the intended receiver is dreaming of.

Everybody in this scheme of things knows the crapshoot involved in this risky game, but will continue to shoot the

---- to perpetuate the bizarre tradition.    Aren't traditions those things that make God's word invalid?

                                 Y(would be scratching my beard if I had one)S

 

p.s. Receivers and Givers are, by definition, mutually interchangeable.

 

Potential Solution: Save up one's own money to procure something that individual wants/needs and buy that self-identified item at the time the correct amount of money accrues, independent of the calendar date.  I, for one, do this. Alternately, some people charge their heart's desire and pay it off at a higher interest rate and for an elongated amount of time. I see many around me that do this. Not my circus, unless it involves real property financed through a mortgage (def'n: Death note). 

[BenJepthah]

Watching the annual circus. Silently eating my high end Sashimi and quietly laughing inwardly.