Have You Ever Regifted Before?

[David In Indy]

I've regifted a few times. <blush>

Well, more than "a few" actually. 

But I am very careful when I do it. I try to NEVER give the gift to someone who might know the person who originally gave the gift to me. Also, I try very hard to only give the gift to someone who I think might actually enjoy it.

Does this make me a bad person? 

[moremojo]

Hey, David, I don't think you're a bad person, though I understand your concerns over how others might perceive your action.

I have regifted before, but not Christmas gifts. The example I'm thinking of involves a book that my best friend in high school bought for me, a beautiful, lavishly illustrated volume on Pre-Columbian gold jewelry (I was a major Aguirre, the Wrath of God [a film involving the search for El Dorado] fanatic at the time; and my friend was acknowledging this by his choice of gift). Years later, long after I had lost touch with this person, I chose one day to give this book to my new best friend, who expressed his admiration while perusing it. I felt I had looked through the book to my heart's content, and felt that it could provide more pleasure to my friend. As time passed, he moved away, and eventually he and I sadly lost touch, but the book was in his possession at the time of his departure, and it may yet serve as reminder of our time together were he to pick it up. So I see my regifting as an attempt to pass friendship along, and do not interpret it as a sign of ingratitude for the giver's original impulse.

As with so many things in life, context is key here.

[ednbarby]

I've never regifted, but I've been the victim, I suspect, of quite a few regifts, mainly from my ex-next-door-neighbor (we lived next to her for 11 years and moved across town two years ago).  Among the many things I've suspected she's regifted to me are:

- Various and sundry bath soap and/or salt sets that don't look like anything I've seen in stores around here (and when she knows very well that I prefer showers)
- A roasting pan set where it was clear the box had been opened and the contents sampled (but not used - everything was still in its vacuum-sealed wrapper, at least) - that actually came in handy last Thursday
- Calendars and address books that aren't in any kind of a wrapper
- Most disturbingly, a Crest Whitestrips box set with an open seal on the box.  That bothered me on at least two levels.  (And my dental hygiene and tooth whiteness are just fine, thankyouverymuch.)

[David In Indy]

Oh now I would NEVER regift something I already opened up. That's terrible!

If I receive something I suspect I may regift at a later date, I won't open the package. I will put a sticker on the box with the name of the person who gave it to me along with the date I received the gift. I will only give the gift to someone I honesty think will enjoy it. Otherwise, I will simply donate the gift to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Failing that, I will stick it in a closet and never look at it again or I'll throw it away.

[dot-matrix]

Oh now I would NEVER regift something I already opened up. That's terrible!

If I receive something I suspect I may regift at a later date, I won't open the package. I will put a sticker on the box with the name of the person who gave it to me along with the date I received the gift. I will only give the gift to someone I honesty think will enjoy it. Otherwise, I will simply donate the gift to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Failing that, I will stick it in a closet and never look at it again or I'll throw it away.

Me too David, I only pass along things I have no use for or don't care for to someone I honestly think may like them.  Gifts I personally find horrendeous hit the trash or go in the charity bin because I would be embarassed for anyone to think I though so little of them and myself to give them something like that!

[nakymaton]

My family has a re-gifting tradition. There's this ancient chocolate muffin that my father-in-law picked up at one of those free hotel breakfasts. My husband gave him a hard time about it, I think, so my father-in-law wrapped it up and gave it to my husband as a present.

Every year one of us manages to wrap the thing up in some kind of elaborate way and give it to someone else. (And we've also tried to disguise other presents as The Muffin.) Half the fun of holidays is now watching everyone try to figure out if they've just received The Muffin.

I hope nobody ever tries to eat the thing. 

[Ellemeno]

My family has a re-gifting tradition. There's this ancient chocolate muffin that my father-in-law picked up at one of those free hotel breakfasts. My husband gave him a hard time about it, I think, so my father-in-law wrapped it up and gave it to my husband as a present.

Every year one of us manages to wrap the thing up in some kind of elaborate way and give it to someone else. (And we've also tried to disguise other presents as The Muffin.) Half the fun of holidays is now watching everyone try to figure out if they've just received The Muffin.

I hope nobody ever tries to eat the thing. 

Mel, this is a fantastic story.  Thinking of you, Clarissa

[delalluvia]

What's wrong with re-gifting?  You were given something as a gift.  It is now yours to do with as you like.  If you want to give it away to someone else...what's the big deal?

Just so long as you avoid the embarrassing faux paux of giving it back to the person who gave it to you in the first place or giving it to someone else in the presence of the original gifter.

And of course, it has to be in the original package or look unused.

[welliwont]

Here is a funnny re-gifting story, not sure if anyone here has already read this?

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

The one present Roy Collette wasn't looking forward to
getting for Christmas 1988 was those pants. Yet he
knew he was in trouble as soon as the flatbed truck
bearing a concrete-filled tank off a truck used to deliver
ready-mix rolled up. Sure as God made little green apples,
those pants had to be in there. And he was going to have
to fish them out, else declare his brother-in-law the
winner of a rivalry that had spanned 20 years.

Being the sport he is, brother-in-law Larry Kunkel
thoughtfully supplied the services of a crane to hoist the
concrete-filled tank off the flatbed.

What's this game, you ask? What was the significance of
these pants, and why were two grown men going to such
efforts year after year to retrieve them, only to send
them off again?

It all began in 1964 when Larry Kunkel's mom gave him a
pair of moleskin pants. After wearing them a few times, he
found they froze stiff in Minnesota winters and thus
wouldn't do. That next Christmas, he wrapped the garment
in pretty paper and presented it to his brother-in-law.

Brother-in-law Roy Collette discovered he didn't want them
either. He bided his time until the Christmas after, then
packaged them up and gave them back to Kunkel. This yearly
exchange proceeded amicably until one year Collette
twisted the pants tightly and stuffed them into a
3-foot-long, 1-inch wide pipe.

And so the game began. Year after year, as the pants were
shuffled back and forth, the brothers strove to make
unwrapping them more difficult, perhaps in the hope of
ending the tradition. In retaliation for the pipe, Kunkel
compressed the pants into a 7-inch square, wrapped them
with wire and gave the "bale" to Collette. Not to be
outdone, Collette put the pants into a 2-foot-square crate
filled with stones, nailed it shut, banded it with steel
and gave the trusty trousers back to Kunkel.

The brothers agreed to end the caper if the trousers were
damaged. But they were as careful as they were clever. As
the game evolved, so did the rules. Only "legal and moral"
methods of wrapping were permitted. Wrapping expenses were
kept to a minimum with only junk parts used.
Kunkel next had the pants mounted inside an insulated
window that had a 20-year guarantee and shipped them off
to Collette.

Collette broke the glass, recovered the trousers, stuffed
them into a 5-inch coffee can, which he soldered shut. The
can was put in a 5-gallon container filled with concrete
and reinforcing rods and given to Kunkel the following
Christmas.

Kunkel installed the pants in a 225-pound homemade steel
ashtray made from 8-inch steel casings and etched
Collette's name on the side. Collette had trouble
retrieving the treasured trousers, but succeeded without
burning them with a cutting torch.

Collette found a 600-pound safe and hauled it to Viracon
Inc. in Owatonna, where the shipping department decorated
it with red and green stripes, put the pants inside and
welded the safe shut. The safe was then shipped to Kunkel,
who was the plant manager for Viracon's outlet in
Bensenville.

The pants next turned up in a drab green, 3-foot cube that
once was a 1974 Gremlin. A note attached to the
2,000-pound scrunched car advised Collette that the pants
were inside the glove compartment.

In 1982 Kunkel faced the problem of retrieving the pants
from a tire 8 feet high and 2 feet wide and filled with
6,000 pounds of concrete. On the outside Collette had
written, "Have a Goodyear."

In 1983 the pants came back to Collette in a 17.5-foot red
rocket ship filled with concrete and weighing 6 tons. Five
feet in diameter, with pipes 6 inches in diameter outside
running the length of the ship and a launching pad
attached to its bottom, the rocket sported a picture of
the pants fluttering atop it. Inside the rocket were 15
concrete-filled canisters, one of which housed the pants.

Collette's revenge for the rocket ship was delivered to
Kunkel in the form of a 4-ton Rubik's Cube in 1985. The
cube was made of concrete that had been baked in a kiln
and covered with 2,000 board feet of lumber.

Kunkel "solved the cube," and for 1986 gift-giving
repackaged the pants into a station wagon filled with 170
steel generators all welded together. Because the pants
have to be retrieved undamaged, Collette was faced with
carefully taking apart each component.

What happened to the pants in 1987 is a mystery, and their
1988 packaging (concrete-filled tank) was mentioned at the
beginning of this page. Sadly, 1989's packaging scheme
brought the demise of the much-abused garment.

Collette was inspired to encase the pantaloons in 10,000
pounds of jagged glass that he would then deposit in
Kunkel's front yard. "It would have been a great one -
really messy," Kunkel ruefully admitted. The pants were
shipped to a friend in Tennessee who managed a glass
manufacturing company. While molten glass was being poured
over the insulated container that held them, an oversized
chunk fractured, transforming the pants into a pile of
ashes.

The ashes were deposited into a brass urn and delivered to
Kunkel along with this epitaph:

Sorry, Old Man Here lies the Pants. . . An attempt to cast
the pants in glass brought about the demise of the pants
at last.

The urn now graces the fireplace mantel in Kunkel's home.

[Lynne]

This poll reminds me of my ex-mother-in-law who I love dearly but is a complete flake.  (I could regale you for hours with MIL stories, but I'll refrain.)

EVERY year, she would dig through the attic for additional 'gifts' and re-wrap them and put them under the tree.

Now, these are affluent people, and there was an embarassment of gifts anyhow.  But it was important to her that the gifts be stacked about half-tree high (5 ft) tapering to the floor so it looked 'right.'

Apparently, however, she had a knack for buying the strange and bizarre that neither her children nor her husband actually wanted throughout their entire lives.

So much of Christmas brunch (w/champagne, naturally) was spent opening gifts from years past (randomly tagged so you may or may not have been the original recipient) - old games they'd hated, ugly sweaters, scary ties, vintage whatnots from great-aunt whomever - you get the idea!

Now that I've written all this out, it was at least as fun as it was weird and I kinda miss it !

-Lynne