I read a study recently about the value of gifts. What the researchers did was this: they got a bunch of college students to list all the gifts they had received that Christmas, with the retail price of the gifts. Then they asked the students how much THEY would be willing to pay for the items in question, if they were buying them for themselves – completely ignoring any sentimental value, just considering the gifts as consumer goods. The answers ranged from more than the retail price to zero. On average, the gifts lost about 30% of their value by not being something the receivers wanted. Parents and romantic partners were the best at picking good gifts, while grandparents and co-workers came in last.

Of course, these are college students, the exact age of people who are least likely to communicate with their elders and share interests with them. It would be interesting to see the same study done among grown people.

(Regarding grandparents and bad gifts: when I mentioned this study to my husband, he recalled a time when he was eight years old and his grandmother gave him a gift basket of scented soaps. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t intended as a comment on his hygiene, since he was the sort of little boy who refused to play with mud because it was ‘icky,’ but he’s not altogether sure the package wasn’t addressed to the wrong person. Nevertheless, he thanked her politely.)

In my family, my dad hates guessing people’s tastes, and my mom thinks it’s cheating somehow if you just get what people put on a list, so my dad and I have had a benign conspiracy for the past twenty years: we meet secretly and buy each other’s presents together, plus putting our heads together to buy stuff for Mom. We make a day of it, meeting for breakfast, shopping, and hopefully being finished in time for a long, pleasant lunch. Then we pretend to be surprised on Christmas for the benefit of my mother. I think my mom, who’s not completely clueless, probably knows what’s up, but she graciously pretends to be fooled by our act and everyone’s happy.

Still, the best gifts are the ones you love but never would have picked for yourself. The perfect CD by a group you never heard of, the perfect book on a subject you didn’t know you would find fascinating, the shirt in a style completely unlike your usual mode of dress that looks great on you. I try to find at least one of these for each of my family members; sometimes I strike gold, and sometimes I strike out. I have a couple of friends who are especially good at this, and you’re right, Leanne, they’re the best gifts of all.