When I tell my son to eat out on me, he uses the one joint card we have. It is a lot easier than sending him a gift certificate.
I doubt mcat’ son is living with his g/f, but they spend time together. I would go for the joint restaurant meal.
I think a gift certificate would be a lovely idea. Although your son is aware of the way your family “doesn’t do” holiday gifts, you are correct that gf may have difficulty warming up to that method. A combined gift for the two of them to enjoy together is perfect!
mcat - I like (and have used) the gift card idea. Surprise your son and send him a gift. How about a nice tie for his residency interviews? Could you choose a lovely scarf for his girlfriend? We always gave D’s boyfriend a gift at Christmas and on his birthday. Sometimes it was a gift card to a coffee shop or a restaurant and sometimes it was clothing D would pick out and then send us a link. Even when the ‘kids’ were in high school, we would give their boyfriends/girlfriends a small gift. It’s just a nice thing to do.
D1 told me that her BF was going to get me a xmas present, and if I would consider getting one for him too. That’s when I knew it was time.
In the first place, it really doesn’t matter at this stage whether her family exchanges Christmas gifts or not, or what they give her.
Secondly, unless she has given you gifts in the past, or she is going to be with you over the holidays, it is perfectly fine for you not to get her anything as long as you also don’t get your son anything, which I gather is your norm. (This is assuming that they more or less live together.)
Lastly, despite the above, if you are concerned with appearing welcoming, and want to make a gesture that recognizes their couple-hood without going overboard, I concur with others that a joint gift in the form of a gift card would be a nice thing to do. Rather than selecting a restaurant or an event for them, you could send a holiday card addressed to both of them including a Visa gift card for $100 suggesting that they do something nice together.
Mcat, what her parents / relatives do, or how they interpret things, or whether she is close to them or not has NOTHING to do with your own decision making. You are obsessed with worrying about these people you haven’t even met.
I come from a family of extravagant gifters. I married into a family of non gifters. My parents continued in their way, and h’s parents continued in their way. No one changed to please the others. It’s not normal to worry about pleasing her parents. .
“Her side of family tend to give each other gifts quite extensively. So her parents and relatives surely will give her gifts. We do not want to give out the impression that we “disapprove” the relationship between her and DS.”
This logic doesn’t make sense. They are going to give her gifts because she’s their relative they love. Why would you think they’d be paying any attention whatsoever to what you do or don’t give, when they don’t know you?
Thanks.
We generally agree at this statement:
“To me, a gift is often a burden. 99% of the time, I would prefer not to receive one.”
I think she may prefer this way.
So we will not buy a present specifically for her. So sure whether we even need to give them a “joint gift” either.
I do not think they are in the stage of “more or less living together” yet. But it appears they have been visiting each other quite often.
It just occurs to me that many people really have almost everything they need. It is not easy to find a present the other person really needs or likes.
"Then, there will be a very elaborate way of $$$ gift exchanges among all parties involved. (Her parents really do not live in the US so they keep much more traditions than we do.) "
You are not obligated to participate in any of their elaborate gifting traditions. Ever. You get to keep your own habits and culture and they get to keep theirs.
I think you should give a gift only if you want to give one. Don’t give one because you feel you have an obligation to do so just because other people do so. I love giving gifts so I would so the night out, the movie tickets, the restaurant gift card, etc.
Amusingly S2 just said his girlfriend wanted to know if we had ___. (I’ve already forgotten what it was, but it sounded fine for a gift.) Apparently she probably will be with us for the holidays and I guess we’d better find her a present or two! And stocking stuffers!
So don’t give either of them anything. Stop worrying. Presumably your S is sufficiently articulate to explain that your family does not normally exchange Christmas gifts.
If you receive a gift from her, out of the blue, it will be simple to send the type of joint gift we have suggested.
Do your family and hers even celebrate Christmas?
Our family do not, but we do not know whether hers do or not. We only know she is very close to her family and goes home whenever she could. (It seems that some time ago, they almost decided to fly to her country to have a visit but aborted the plan because they could not have enough time – if they managed to do that, it would be strange because we are supposedly the family living much closer to them.)
Well the. If you don’t celebrate Christmas and you don’t normally send presents to your son in December, there’s your answer.
You are right.
Nevertheless, although I have stopped thinking about it, I found my wife keeps looking around where she lives to see if there is some nice restaurant and whether they sell gift cards. My bet is that there are “nice” restaurants in that uppertown-like neighborhood, where even the rent of a small studio likely costs $2500 per month, and one-bedroom may cost the north of $3000! Lots of high-income young professionals (who do not cook for themselves and likely have plenty of income) may live in that kind of neighborhood.
Mcat, you are overthinking it. There are nice restaurants everywhere and 95% of restaurants everywhere sell gift cards. There’s no need to make this into a big project. I’m sure you and/or very busy wife can make a 3-minute phone call and buy one.
My mother and my daughter both live in the same neighborhood in Chicago. When I visit there, I routinely walk into restaurants, coffee shops, cupcake shops, etc and pick up gift cards for them. I did so yesterday as a matter of fact - dropped my mom off and promptly walked 2 blocks to a little diner I know she likes and bought a $50 gift card to tuck into Christmas presents. Don’t make this hard. It’s not. Buying a gift card to a restaurant is about as easy as can be.
Mcat…tel us the city. I’m sure there will be many, many good suggestions for restaurants from the vast CC community.
PG, We have never made a call to buy a gift card. We did walk into a store or restaurant to buy a gift card in the past.
It seems my wife sets her eyes on some higher end chocolate like Godiva now, since she was about to send them something before the holiday break. I heard it is more convenient to send something for DS to her place instead of his place, likely because there is no window of “office hours” for picking up package at her place, or 24 hours pickup window at her place. I do not know the details though.
@thumper, Boston. (They do not have a car there.)
Also I know very little about north east. I noticed DS took Amtrak from New Haven to Boston frequently recently (in the past, he took the bus. Not sure why he chose Amtrax over bus recently all of a sudden.) I even do not know there is an Amtrak going along the coast between CT and RI/MA. (I do know that DS took Amtrak from New Haven to NH/VT (the small town where Dartmouth is at) at least two times in the past.) I only know there is a MetroNorth commuter train between New Haven and NYC. I knew this because DS once took my wife to visit NYC when she visited him (in the past 4-5 years, only she visited him, in order to save the traveling cost) and they took that commuter train and sent me a lot of pictures in their trip. I have never visited any large cities in the north east (like NYC or Boston); actually I have never been in the east coast.
Just buy an AmEx gift card and let them decide how to spend it. Maybe a nice walk would help you unwind.
^ My wife somehow thinks one of the “problems” is that the g/f likely does not need the money and the gift card is too much like money, so it is better to actually get something for them. That is the reason why she switches to the idea of buying Godiva because she plans to send a package very soon any way.
We have noticed among our friends that, unless it is for business trip, if a person tends to take an international trip frequently, especially when he/she books the ticket without much concern about when to travel, it is likely he or she does not have much concern about the money. (According to this logic, because both my wife and I has had such a trip only a couple of times in our whole life time, we must have been not doing very well financially. LOL.)