A Gift-Giving Question Of The Day

These may be the two most important questions ever asked in the gift-giving universe.

Single people without children: do you give a unique gift to each individual member of a couple or family, or do you give a single gift for everyone to share?

Couples and parents: does everyone in your household give a unique gift to everyone on your list, or do you give gifts “from the couple” or “from the family?”

You can already see how the math might work on this: Joey would buy individual presents for Danny, DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle and would receive one gift “from the Tanners,” and then he’d buy presents for Jesse, Rebecca, Nicky, and Alex and receive one gift “from the Katsopolises.”

Some families institute “draw a name” policies to prevent these kinds of situations — or they follow Ester’s example and do no-gift Christmases — but that still leaves a lot of single people giving two gifts to a couple, or three or four gifts to a family, and receiving one.

There is so much research to be done here. Do couples spend twice as much on a “from both of us!” gift, or do couples and single people spend roughly the same amount of money per gift? Do couples end up buying more gifts overall, because they have twice the family and friends to shop for? At what point do single people shift from giving individual gifts to giving a single large gift “to the Tanners with love from Uncle Joey?”

Share your experiences in the comments, and we’ll see if we can collect any usable data.

This story is part of our Holidays 2015 series.

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