Last week at work we were talking about the worst Christmas presents we’d ever received. Most of them were ‘won’ as white elephant gifts. Mine was a Christmas toothbrush. A coworker’s was a single bag of microwave popcorn, not an entire box the buttered good stuff, a single, unsalted bag. But the gift that took the cake was a hairbrush; a used hairbrush that already had hair stuck in the bristles.
It seems to me that there are good lessons here both on receiving and on giving. First, you should always take joy in the gifts you receive, you could easily get something worse. And if you’re giving, give something good, or else your gift might just end up causing a room-full of marketers to laugh until they cry.