How (not) to recycle gifts and other tales of holiday tragedy

I volunteered to write this article on the basis of a story that has become legend in my family  the story of the lugubrious blue butterfly fountain. 

My father is a writer, which means, my father comes up with strange ideas from time to time, some more successful than others. The idea of giving my sister and I a pair of lovebirds each one Valentine’s Day was a great idea (by far the best, perhaps only, Valentine’s gift I’ve ever actually been given); the idea of growing a Fu Manchu beard for my grade school graduation, not so much. One Christmas my father decided my grandmother needed a ceramic fountain which featured a spray of flowers of varying bright colors growing out of a fake rock and perched on top of the entire affair, a lugubrious blue butterfly. It was, in a word, hideous. My grandmother was so stunned by its ugliness she of the quick comeback simply stared at it in silent wonder. I could see the thoughts in her head. Could anything so aesthetically atrocious truly exist? What blind, un-gifted craftsman conceived and fashioned such a perfect piece of (insert word)? My son does not love me. My uncle quietly took the piece away and hid it in the closet of her bedroom. Christmas proceeded as usual. Christmas morning, one year later, my dad gleefully rips into lola’s gift to him and — you can guess the rest: sitting there in all its ceramic splendor, was the lugubrious blue butterfly fountain. Karma is a bitch!

Lesson number one of recycling gifts: Remember who gave you the gift you wish to recycle. There are no shortcuts with this rule. If you have even the slightest fear that the gift you plan to give to someone may have come from that very person, listen to that voice and gift it to that aid-worker friend of yours you have not seen in six years — yes, that one, the one who lives in Niger. She needs that fake gold Gucci bag, so large she can use it to carry firewood to her hut or repurpose it as an umbrella. Keep track of the ownership of gifts by tagging them. Don’t use stickies. They fall off or stick onto the wrong gift. Tie a string with a note on it around the gift or seal in a bag with masking tape and label bag with permanent marker. Put the gifts in a closet set aside for this purpose and assess the stash close to the holidays.

The lugubrious blue butterfly fountain was ceremoniously returned to my appalled lola by my furious father. Lola was appalled because she got it back, not so much because she had completely forgotten it had come from Dad in the first place.

Which brings us to lesson number two: Only recycle nice gifts. This lesson is actually based on a law of the universe: “Ugly things persist.” Unfortunately, when ugly things enter the stream of commerce, they remain there, the flotsam and jetsam of merchandise floating like the garbage in Manila bay from the US embassy, to MOA, to the Yacht Club to Bay Walk, then back again, never disintegrating, existing forever. Do us all a favor: burn it. There is no other way to get rid of an ugly gift. An ugly object does not transform into an acceptable one because you give it to another person with the very best of intentions. That’s right. Good intentions are not like Tinkerbell’s powder. No magical qualities there. You may be tempted to rid yourself of a crappy gift with the thought that one man’s crap is another man’s emerald. Wrong! In passing on said crappy gift you have a) engaged in the gift-equivalent of a chain letter; and b) created a mortal enemy out of a so-so friend. 

While the original friend giving you the crappy gift to begin with can be forgiven — some people have bad taste and we normally don’t choose people to be our friends on the basis of their gift-giving abilities (unless you’re unbearably shallow and therefore deserve said crappy gift), I guarantee you the person who is re-gifted the crappy gift will sense that it was a recycling job and secretly hate you forever.

But let’s get serious now. Recycling is an art and when done right gives pleasure to all parties involved. I prefer to follow PC conventions and call it, at this point, “regifting.” Think of the task at hand as shopping in your own closet. If you’ve kept to lessons one and two above you should enter the holiday season with a clear conscience and have a good enough selection of objects to redistribute. No more battling throngs in Megamall, beating your head against the wall in Glorietta; you can shop in the comfort of your pajamas.

Like choosing gifts to purchase for loved ones, choose which gift to re-gift to someone with care. Recycle nice soaps to lovely and diffident distant aunties. They always need them for the 12th bathroom in their mansion or to wash their cats if they are the eccentric type who write stories for a living. Funky dresses that don’t fit you can go to nieces and, well, funkier and skinnier friends. Knick-knacks can go to new colleagues, assistants. Match that odd book with that odd friend. When in doubt, send it abroad. Everyone loves getting things in the mail. Invest in nice wrapping paper, ribbons and pretty cards to attach. The effort you put into making the wrapping look nice will go far towards assuaging your guilt at passing on another’s gift.

Finally, pat yourself on the back for being frugal, intelligent and artistic. Recyling, when done right, is like passing along good karma. Regifting brings pleasure to your unsuspecting gift receiver and pleasure to your pocket. In accordance with chaos theory, happiness spreads, like the waves from the wings of that lugubrious blue butterfly if it could flap them.