<p>One year my daughter gave her former boyfriend a pair of tickets to an NHL game for Christmas. During the December before she gave him the tickets, she mentioned several times how she’d never been to a professional hockey game and how much fun she thought it would be. She gave him the tickets and he was thrilled - and he almost immediately invited his best friend to go to the game with him. The friend said, “You sure don’t want to take D?” Nah, why would he do that? When the friend had to back out due to a conflict, he asked another friend. Eventually he did end up taking D to the game, pretty much as a last resort, because everyone else knew the tickets had come from D and gave him a lame excuse that they couldn’t go with him. </p>
<p>My SIL is a shopaholic, who can’t resist a “bargain.” One year she gave S a video game that was 3 years out of date (MLB 2005 in 2008 or something like that). When he was 14 she gave him a children’s cookbook and a calculator for Christmas. </p>
<p>My selfless H is awful at accepting gifts. One year I forced him to make a Christmas list for himself. He wrote down: wine, cheese, and shoe polish.</p>