I Don't Give Gifts to Kids (or Anyone)

And no one is mad at me.

Welcome! I’m Lisa Sibbett and this is The Auntie Bulletin, a newsletter for people who are significantly involved in helping to raise other people’s children. You can read my archive here. If you appreciate reading this newsletter, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 a month or $50 for the year. You can also support my work by “liking” this post below. It only requires a click on the little heart icon, and it helps other people find my Substack.

If you’re interested in our topic this week, you can find out more about how I think about money and resources in the Q&A I did for Dana Miranda’s excellent anti-capitalist personal finance newsletter, Healthy Rich. It feels a little vulnerable to share it with you, because I feel like I’m supposed to be maintaining an Authoritative Writerly Voice, and talking about personal finances feels… personal. But I think it’s important for us to be able to recognize the material realities of one another’s lives. In the Q&A, I also talk about my well-known (?) love for humpback whales and what it meant to me to grow up in a predominantly white town on a Native American Indian Reservation. I hope you’ll check it out, and also subscribe to Dana’s newsletter.

Now on to the main attraction. As always, read to the end for the Cute Kid Video of the Week!

Let’s Get To It

A few weeks back, in my On Befriending Kids post, I mentioned that I don’t give gifts to kids – or anyone – and a bunch of Auntie Bulletin readers were like, “I’m sorry, did you just say you don’t give gifts? Like, at all?? SAY MORE.”

So by popular demand, I now present The Auntie Bulletin’s First Annual Gift-Not-Giving Guide. I’ll explain why I don’t give gifts, then cut to the chase¹ regarding how I get away with it and why everybody in my life seems to still like me. There’s a major “One Cool Trick” moment, so be sure to read at least that far. If you’re short on time, you can skip down to it – you’ll see there’s a heading with “One Cool Trick” in it.

Now, if you love selecting, making, giving, and/or receiving gifts, this post may not be for you. No worries! Please tune back in next week for Part II of my Gift-Not-Giving Guide, provisionally entitled “Giving Gifts Without Giving Gifts.” For Auntie Bulletin readers whose love language is gift-giving, next week’s post may be right up your alley – full of ideas for holiday-season rituals of generosity that y’all avid gift-givers probably already understand better than I do. 

Speaking of People Whose Love Language is Gifts…

The Intertribal Canoe Journey is an annual gathering of Coast Salish Tribes from around the Salish Sea – a region that extends from the southern tip of the Puget Sound in Washington State, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and up through the Strait of Georgia east of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Almost every year since 1989, the Tribes paddle their canoes to the home lands of that year’s host, stopping overnight with other Tribes and gathering more and more canoes along the way. Thousands of Tribal members paddle, and thousands more people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, support the crews and host sites along the way. The Canoe Journey is an utterly beautiful expression of cultural revitalization and its importance for passing along cultural traditions to young people cannot be overstated.

Just look at these amazing young people. Here they are in their Tribal canoes — from left, chicha, štankiya, ulxayu and qisqis — lined up waiting to land during Landing Day of the Power Paddle to Puyallup Youth Canoe Journey 2024 in Tacoma, Wash., on Wednesday, July 31. (Photo by Michelle Alaimo)

I grew up on the homelands of the Suquamish Tribe, and in the lead-up to the Canoe Journey each summer, you can volunteer to help make gifts for all the people who will be passing through. Even participating in the giveaway workshops is itself a gift to volunteers, because you also get to learn from Tribal teachers how to make items out of cedar or wool, how to make and paint a drum, how to make necklaces or harvest and prepare traditional medicine. It’s utterly wonderful.

Gift-giving is central to many Indigenous cultures – a tradition Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer has called the “gift economy.” From the Indigenous perspective she describes, “one’s freely-given gifts cannot be made into someone else’s capital.” Indeed, as she writes in Braiding Sweetgrass, the fundamental nature of gifts is that “they move”: 

And their value increases with their passage. The field made a gift of berries to us and we made a gift of them to our father. The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes. This is hard to grasp for societies steeped in notions of private property, where others are, by definition, excluded from sharing. Practices such as posting land against trespass, for example, are expected and accepted in a property economy but are unacceptable in an economy where land is seen as a gift to all…. Many of our ancient teachings counsel that whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again.

A gift economy – central to so many Indigenous cultures – engages us in a relationship of reciprocity with each other as well as with the plants and animals and land and waterways we depend on. When the Suquamish Tribe makes and gives gifts made of cedar bark to their guests, they are passing on a gift they received from the cedar trees, and from the ecosystems that nurture those trees, and from the ancestors who have lived in reciprocity with those ecosystems since time immemorial. The gift is just being passed along to its next recipient.

Alright, so now let’s talk about Christmas. 

The Tyranny of Giftspectations

Here’s me when I think about Christmas shopping. Just please, please no.

In my family growing up, Christmas was the biggest gift-giving holiday of the year, but in what follows I’m actually talking about any holiday or occasion, in any culture or tradition, that comes with obligatory gift-giving – or more specifically, obligatory gift-buying. In general, gift-buying holidays in dominant U.S. culture could not be more different from getting together with a bunch of community members every week for months to make handmade gifts for strangers like members of the Suquamish Tribe do each year. In dominant U.S. culture, Christmas and other gift-buying holidays are rarely occasions to enact interdependence and generosity toward people we don’t know; rather, they are occasions to enact consumerist social expectations under capitalism.

I mean, aren’t the expectations to buy things intense? There’s the ambient social pressure. There are kids (and adults) making lists of what they want. Gift guides proliferate in every cranny of the internet. Then there are the people who have very specific expectations – only some of which are made explicit – about what should be done on the holiday in question and who should receive what from whom, and these people are often willing to be actively unpleasant if their giftspectations aren’t met. 

Aunties, let’s help kids grow up free from the tyranny of giftspectations. Let’s allow each other to opt out of visiting strip malls and big box stores, and let’s help one another feel liberated to cancel our Amazon Prime subscriptions. Let’s let the relief of not holiday shopping wash through our bodies. Let’s build a beloved community in which what each of us have is somewhat proportionate to what each of us need. 

Try This One Cool Trick…

The key to opting out of giving gifts is showing the people you love that you love them – all year round. 

Gift giving is a love language, but it’s not the only one. As you probably know, the love languages guy identified five:

1. Words of affirmation

2. Quality time

3. Physical touch

4. Acts of service

5. Giving gifts

Me, I’m an acts of service person – in the form of helping my people with projects, listening when they’re in distress, caring for people recovering from surgery, filling the fridge when there’s a new baby, and so on. With kids, acts of service include mundane stuff like picking them up from school as well as offering services they highly value, like telling them exciting stories or teaching them to chop vegetables with a sharp knife. The amount of service I perform for my loved ones varies with my other commitments and my health (as a person with a chronic illness), but when I can help out, I like to. I’m also big on quality time and words of affirmation. 

So when gift-giving time comes around, none of my people are unclear about how I feel about them. My not giving gifts doesn’t mean anything. 

In fact, here’s what I do when kids inevitably ask, “Why didn’t you get me a Christmas present?” I look them in the eye. I smile warmly (perhaps wickedly). I ask, “Are you worried I don’t love you?” Then they roll their eyes and go about their business, because the answer is too obvious to dignify with an answer. 

Or if the kid acts genuinely curious, I’ll explain: “I think you have enough stuff. I don’t think people need so much stuff.” Then if they still seem interested, I might say one or two things about why consumerism is a bummer. 

A Note on Teens

Say you’ve been giving gifts to a kid for years, and now they’re a teenager, and if you stop giving them gifts they will surely notice. I recommend that you have a (brief!) chat about why you’re making this choice, reassure them that you love them like crazy, and then slip them some cash. One of the things teenagers want most in life is independence, and having money lets them make more of their own choices. 

Now I know, I know, money is a gift. I never said I was a purist.² 

The reason I suggest giving money to teenagers is that they’re too old to forget that you have historically given them presents, but maybe too young to get your reasons for stopping. Most teens don’t have years of experience doing holiday shopping for a long list of people, so they don’t understand what’s stressful about it. They also tend to be sensitive to perceived rejection (which is developmental and not a personality flaw).

On the other hand, kids these days are more aware than any previous generation about the costs of overconsumption and the realities of climate change. Speaking as someone who used to teach teenagers about the social world for a living, I can attest that they’re great at understanding complex issues if explained in an accessible way. So you be the judge. Maybe they’ll be enthusiastic about your decision to stop giving gifts after all. (But you still might slip them some cash, because Cool Auntie).

What To Say to Other Adults

When opting out of giving gifts, adults with high giftspectations are the most difficult demographic. Kids are used to taking what comes; for them, life is just one weird adult curveball after another. But grown-ups tend to be set in our ways. I’m going to offer a bunch of suggestions here, but please recognize that your mileage may vary.

First, there is no need to give holiday gifts to your neighbors, coworkers, or acquaintances. Cross them off your list. Next!

Now assess the remaining field of adults with whom you typically exchange holiday gifts. 

Consider: who in your life might be happy to opt out? Talk to them. Propose that you stop exchanging gifts. Enjoy crossing each other off your shopping lists. On the day, be sure to touch base about how much you love them and also how much you love not buying them presents. Next!

Now talk to the people who you’re not sure how they’ll react. Here are some things you can say:

• “Gifts aren’t my love language.”

• “Holiday shopping is rough on my wellbeing.”

• “I love you like crazy.” 

• “Let’s create some different holiday rituals.” (Check out next week’s Auntie Bulletin for suggestions!)

Don’t lecture them about e-waste or carbon emissions or how the richest 1% of the population owns more wealth than the bottom 50%. Save the anti-capitalist screeds for audiences who are not currently at risk of feeling personally rejected by you.

Don’t apologize. Not giving gifts doesn’t harm anyone. I used to be an over-apologizer (like many women), but then an older, wiser woman advised me that anytime I want to say “I’m sorry,” I should check if I really mean “thank you.” In this case, instead of, “I’m sorry for not giving you presents,” try, “thanks for understanding.”

As you have these conversations, I hope you will find more loved ones who are happy, or at least willing, to opt out of exchanging gifts.

This leaves the gift-giving hardliners, and you know your own hardliners best. You may need to capitulate to their wishes for the sake of harmony. Alternatively, you might try slowly backing off on your gift-exchanging traditions a little bit at a time over multiple years. Be sure to communicate your love for them repeatedly and clearly. And geez, talk to your therapist about how to navigate your relationships with these people. (Although let’s be real: if you’re in therapy at all, I bet you already talk about them a lot).³

Two and a Half Groups Who Should Keep Receiving Gifts

If, in the past, you have given gifts to your employees, keep doing that forever. This includes both the people who work for you at your job and any people who work for you in your home. You have power over these people. They may be counting on your annual gift (especially if it’s money) and your continuing to give them an annual gift demonstrates your ongoing recognition of their contributions. It helps them feel secure in their job. No suddenly opting out of giving gifts to your employees. 

If you or your loved ones haven’t always been able to afford gifts, and exchanging them feels like financial security, by all means keep at it. There are people in my family who didn’t always have access to the things they needed as kids, let alone the things they wanted. It’s important to them to be able to buy what they want and to get nice things for their loved ones. If this is your experience, I’m so happy for you that you’re able to afford things now! Carry on and be well.

The half group is kids who live far away and you don’t get to see them very often, and it’s highly important that they know that you’re one of Their People. This is why I’ve been giving gifts to my goddaughter all these years – I’ve never been available to pick her up from school so instead I’ve sent her books and games and t-shirts and stuff. (Famously, I sent her Pippi Longstocking two years in a row when she was younger – oops, sorry Ollo!) 

For the long-distance children in our lives, gifts are often the best love language we have available. On the other hand, many people get a lot of mileage out of Facetime, and old fashioned letters and postcards are also pretty great. I wish I could remember where, this week, I read about how much toddlers adore getting mail, but boy is this true. Older kids too. I wish I’d thought of it with my goddaughter, but I didn’t. These days I text her. (She’s so old. She drives and everything). 

The Radical Politics of Not Giving Gifts

Imagine a world in which all of the people in your gift-giving circle just… stop buying and exchanging gifts from stores. Nobody has to do it anymore.

This is (with some exceptions) what has transpired in my family over the past many years, and it makes our holidays and family celebrations so much more chill. We don’t do Black Friday or Cyber Monday. We don’t rush to open presents on Christmas morning. We can go at a more leisurely pace and we have more time to focus on each other. It doesn’t feel like anything is missing. In fact, it feels like we’ve gotten something important back. 

For kids especially, receiving lots of gifts at the holidays is of course super exciting. But the brutal truth is that it’s making the world they will inherit worse. We know this. And dominant U.S. society’s overconsumption arguably harms kids in other parts of the world even more than here at home. It’s urgent that we divest from constantly acquiring, wrecking, discarding, and replacing stuff, and it’s abundantly clear that the new presidential administration isn’t going to help us with that. For the next four years at least – but really, forever, no matter what – we need to build the world we want to live in ourselves. 

I used to think that structural change was the most important thing, and our personal choices were negligible by comparison, but I’ve experienced a big pivot over the past few years. I still think positive policy change is super important – however remote the possibility for now – but I’ve also come to understand that our personal choices help create the momentum that drives cultural change, and that cultural change creates the conditions for principled elected officials to act with courage and integrity. In other words, the more we build (hyper)local communities that are healthy, sustainable, and welcoming, the more we prepare the ground for policies that will extend those benefits to all.

Building the beloved community is a long game. It requires us to question the ways we’ve always done things and to have the courage to change it up. Gift-giving holidays like Christmas are hard to reimagine because the traditions and social expectations around them run so deep. But I know from personal experience that it can be done. And you know what? Both I and the kids in my life are better off for it.

Three Recommended Reads

In the wake of an election that looks to be disastrous for children, I’m surprised to find I’m so excited about the huge groundswell of people saying that building community is the key to a better future. Is it just me, or does it feel like everyone is talking about this? Here are three of my favorites from the past week, although it was hard to pick.

One. Community is About What We Are Willing to Feel

I just became aware of Elise Granata’s newsletter, Group Hug!, this week, and I can already tell it will be a go-to. Responding to the urgent calls everywhere for us to build community as fast as we can, she acknowledges in “Interdependence Shouldn’t Feel Like Building a Bunker” that the urgency can be overwhelming and potentially counterproductive.

If there’s been one primary call-to-action on my feeds in the last week, it’s been: Find your people. We are all we’ve got now; let’s build unshakeable networks of survival to support each other. It feels different from eight years ago, when running for something and better organizing voters next time and changing the composition of who governs seemed to dominate everywhere. Obviously this checks out as trust in governance feels like it’s snapping in half and the incoming administration has promised to come for many of us. There is also an undeniable aftertaste of panic, urgency, and bunker-adjacent-cautioning that comes along with it. Find your community or die alone.

Community isn’t just about trying hard enough; it’s about what we are willing to feel. I can’t stop banging on about this because I worry if we do this too quickly, we will fail and bail on all of it.

May we ask ourselves: what needs to change in my life in order to point my entire existence towards other people?

Two. What If We Act As If We Love the Future?

I’ve actually become aware of a lot of writers I didn’t know about recently, and one I’m really excited about is Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, who has a newsletter called What if We Get It Right? and a book by the same name which I immediately put on hold at my local library (12 week wait). Johnson is a marine biologist and climate justice activist, and she’s got really good ideas.

In the article linked above, Johnson unpacks each of these.

This is just gold. Consider sitting down with your people and actually filling it out!

Three. Anyone Know a Benevolent Billionaire?

Garrett Bucks of The White Pages wrote a very good hypothetical entitled “What If the Most Caring Community Members All Knew Each Other?” In it, he imagines a benevolent billionaire knocking on his door and offering him a year’s salary to help all the “trusted providers of care, support, and neighborliness in [the] community” to deepen their ties to one another and “start imagining a future in your community where nobody is left behind.”

In the place where you live, who is…

…the high school teacher whom all the queer and trans kids come out to/the Grandma who keeps an eye on the street that outsiders decry as too dangerous, too hood, too far gone/the domestic violence center’s most committed volunteer/the mom or dad from your nearest elementary school that the other parents text on their lowest days/the music-obsessed kid putting on the basement punk shows/everybody’s favorite colleague at the local factory, nursing home, Taco Bell and call center/the elders who show up every week at the soup kitchen/the watchdogs who attend all of the boring, non-incendiary city council and school board meetings/the person in your nearest faith community that the imam, rabbi, minister or priest identifies as the “true soul” of their congregation/the clinic escort who shows up on the rainiest days/the owner of the small business that everybody in town would be most heartbroken to lose/the person that new immigrants turn to when they first arrive/the neighbors who organize the beloved annual block parties/the gardener who tends to an otherwise vacant lot/the elected official who actually follows up with attendees at public meeting/the person you first texted when the results were final…

I could go on. Easily, actually. And I bet you could as well. It’s the kind of list that, once you start making it, you realize the abundance that already surrounds us.

And Now, the Cute Kid Video of the Week

Look at this adorable baby trying to beatbox like their dad. I love how the dad (or uncle?) waits patiently for the baby to give it a whirl.

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1. “Cut to the chase” after, like, soooo much preamble. Every single week, I set an intention to be concise in the Auntie Bulletin this time. LOLOLOLOL.

2. Here are my gift-not-giving exceptions. 1) I give gifts to my excellent, amazing goddaughter every year because she grew up very far away and gifts are the most portable love language. But starting this year I think I’m switching to the chat-and-cash approach with her. 2) I give gifts for weddings because I guess it never occurred to me not to. 3) For the past few years I’ve been buying all the gifts for my family’s annual Christmas White Elephant gift exchange, and next week I’ll talk more about that, including explaining why I think this is different from the social-expectations-under-capitalism approach to gift giving. 4) I occasionally give gifts at random times to random people when the spirit moves me. 

3. I am strongly pro-therapy, although I know from long experience that a good therapist is hard to find. (I have an awesome one these days, which is proof of concept that they can be found). As my very wise and beloved sister said once in the midst of a family tragedy, “I would wish therapy on everyone I love.”