One of our relatives who live far away and my family have been participating in the gift ritual (giving gifts to each other’s kids during Christmas) for years. We have never been close to each other (for reasons that I really do not want to go into here) but the ritual continues anyway, likely because both their family and our family think the gift-exchanging ritual is good for kids. (Even the kids on both sides knew our relation is not that great after they were old enough to understand it – I believe they likely knew this almost 10 years ago! So it’s somewhat strange how this ritual was started to begin with and is continued to this day.)</p>
<p>Now the “kids” on both sides are well into 20s; most are almost graduated from college. Do you think it is about the time to stop this ritual? Maybe after all of these “kids” graduate from college?</p>
<p>We had a cousin (not godparents) who sent holiday gifts to our kid for a number of years. To be honest, I was not in favor of this for a number of reasons. (BTW-We always reciprocated (for their two kids - we had only one), and wrote thank you notes. ) The main reason I did not like this was that this family lived only about 4 or 5 miles away, and although the kids were a little older than mine, I would have liked them to show some friendship to my kid. They did not have to be best buddies, but our requests to the parents were not met favorably. I invited their D to my D’s (all girl) birthday party. Not only could their D not come, but the mother never invited my D to the parties for her kid. They were not available for weekend get togethers, either. We invited them many times, and once she even said it was too short notice, as if inviting them was rude! Thanks for the lecture, and she did not invite us to get together either at any subsequent date. So, I got fed up. I told H that I would no longer make sure that thank you’s were sent, and no more reciprocation of gifts. I guess it would have been better to just say don’t send a gift if we are not friends, but since my heartfelt requests had previously gone unheeded…I acted rudely.</p>
<p>I really feel that I never understood why she sent the gifts if she did not want to know us.</p>
<p>For the godchild, send a book for the birthday. The siblings wont get jealous, not all god parents are created equally. A note just saying I fou d this book great when I was your age. This way you will still have the connection without expense or angst.</p>