I had actually never thought of doing this, but I definitely can understand it! Received a gift you didn't want. No problems, just give it to someone else! There is an entire website dedicated to the etiquette of regifting...
https://www.regiftable.com/
You got to be careful when regifting. Accidents can happen!
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Ruth says: At a holiday party I decided to provide "regifted" items for all the guests. A male guest chose my answering machine. This gift was given to my kids last christmas. They did not open the box and left it at my house. I held on to it for a year. I didn't open the box. When the guest went home and opened it the next day he found not an answering maching but ladies undies. We traced the gift trail to my son-in-laws sister who got it from her mom, but since she thought it was an answering machine she never opened it. She regifted to her brother who didn't open it. He left it for Me and I kept it unopened for a year. It became a gift at the office holiday party where a male guest took the gift because he needed an answering machine. He opened it to find ladies undies. The gift was given back to me as he couldn't use the undies and I will give it back to my daughter when she comes home for the Holidays. Our office has had many a good laugh over this regifting tale. |
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Doug explains a shock he and his wife of 40yrs received: Forty years ago my wife and I were married. We received a set of four glasses from a friend who was married one year earlier. When we unwrapped this gift there was a note tucked in one of the glasses. It read, "Dear Ted, I hope you and your new wife are as happy as we have been." A nice gesture, right? The problem is that neither mine nor my wife's name is Ted. However, the person that gave us the glasses is named Ted. After a moment of puzzling over this we realized that they had not even opened the gift but gave it to us, wrapping and all. |
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Tereasa tells us about some unfortunately regift from a X-Boyfriend: Last year at Christmas, I gave my boyfriend a year's subscription to "wine of the month". Each month for a whole year, he would receive 2 bottles of wine. One of my gifts, he put one of the bottles of wine from his first shipment in a wine bag to me from Santa. Basically, he regifted to me a gift he received from me. He even had the audacity to remove the wine club sticker. Worst of all, it was my least favorite grape. We broke up before New Year's Eve. |
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Can you handle it? If you don't plan to announce the gift as a regift, ask yourself if you can keep the secret. Never feel guilty about regifting once you"ve done it. |
I believe I have done this before. I find that women have a hard time doing it, but I do not. If it is a gift to me then it is mine, I can choose what I want to do with it, and in this case I am thinking that it would serve a better purpose in some else's hands.
I don't like regifting at all, I see it as a lack of respect towards the person who may have taken the time to give me something, what about if the person spent the last dollars he/she had in order to get you the gift for you to turn and give it to someone else?
Now I have "ungifted" in the past. If they left the tags and reciept in the box, then I am taking that as a green light to return the gift if I didn't want it. My aunt did this all the time. However, if you can tell that the gift came from a place like Walmart or another major retailer, you can even ungift without a reciept as long as they can tell it is theirs (wont give you money back, but you can trade it in for something else).
We have a for-charity gift-giving party where we purchase raffle tickets to win gifts people have brought. There are a few rules:
1) If you bring a gift, you have to get a raffle ticket.
2) The gift must work "as far as you know."
3) The gift cannot be a something you received last year.
There are a few of these gifts that actually keep popping up again and again. There is one christmas ornament, in particular, which has been circulated for nearly a decade. It is a small, porcelain star, which pictures a baby on the front side. No one knows who the baby is, or who the ornament originally belonged to. I'm currently on year number two of holding on to it, and look forward to regifting it at next year's party.
I used to work with a lady called Carol, who blatantly told me that she had a friend whose Christmas present buying, Carol didn't rate too highly.
She told me that if the gift she received wasn't up to much, she wrapped it back up and returned it back to her friend the following year with a new gift tag from her on it!
I thought this was pretty terrible, and to say the least insulting. If I were her friend, she certainly wouldn't be receiving another present off me!
When you think about it, taking your gift and giving it to someone who may appreciate it, seems like a good idea. However, it is a bit insulting for anyone to receive a gift that was one of your "rejects." I believe that giving a gift is supposed to be done with a lot of love and care in the selection process. At least that is how I choose my gifts. If I ever discovered anyone who took my gift and wrapped it for someone else, I would be very hurt, insulted and may even think twice about giving that same person anything, in the near future.