Why you'll never get an honest answer when you ask what someone wants for Christmas

Continuing her series tackling socially unacceptable questions, Christine Manby asks if the social charades around gift-giving are far more trouble than they’re worth

Illustrations by Tom Ford (Tom Ford)

What do you want for Christmas? That’s a lovely question to be asked, isn’t it? Well, sometimes. If the person asking is a dashing billionaire who is so into the season of goodwill that they’ve got a special present wrapping room hidden somewhere on their yacht, it’s great. Especially if you fancy them like crazy and you don’t mind being beholden to them in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. Then it’s “Pass me the Cartier catalogue, baby. I’ll underline all the things I like.”

When the question comes from anybody else, it’s not usually so easy. Of course, we all know what we’d really like for Christmas (Cartier watch catalogue page three, item five). But it’s unlikely that’s what your retired Auntie Jill is hoping to hear. Or your sister, who’s given up avocado toast to save up for a house this year. Or your new squeeze, who hasn’t known you quite long enough to buy something that significant.

In situations like these, revealing what’s on your Christmas list can be fraught. You don’t want to appear too greedy or presumptuous. You don’t want to suggest something over budget that will mean your sister has to live with your parents for another three years. You don’t want to frighten your new lover into ghosting you by accidentally implying you’d like a deeper commitment in the form of something from Gucci. But at the same time, you can’t ask what the parameters are for fear of embarrassing the giver. Is there a more excruciating question than, “What’s the budget?” And so most of us, when asked what we’d like for Christmas, mutter something like, “Oh you don’t have to get me anything. There’s nothing I need! Christmas is for the children.”

But the kind giver insists and so you end up saying, “Oh, just get me something little.”

“What kind of little?”

“I don’t know. You’ll think of something.”

No they won’t!

When we refuse to tell people what we’d like as a gift, we think we’re being humble and modest. We’re doing the right thing. No one over the age of 12 should have a Christmas list. In reality, we’re just being bloody annoying.

It’s a very rare person – someone without many friends – who hasn’t stood in the middle of Marks & Spencer at some point in December wanting to pull that face out of Munch’s The Scream because they’ve run out of present-buying inspiration. You’ve got a list of 12 names and only three of them have anything useful written alongside them. Those three names are the children in the family who sent you their Christmas gift wishes via WhatsApp with handy URLs. Good for them. All the others are adults who muttered, “Just get me something small.” How you wish they’d sent URLs too. It could have been so easy. Click, click, done. They get what they want. You get to stay home on the busiest shopping day of the year. But no, they said something small and gave you no further clues and so you have to conjure up the perfect gift yourself. Let’s have a look at the alternatives.

Money? Cash in an envelope? Well, yes, we’d all like to receive a big wodge of cash, but giving cash looks lazy and just a little bit sordid. It also puts a very clear value on the transaction. Ugh. You can’t give anyone other than close younger relatives bank notes.

(Tom Ford)

Vouchers really aren’t much better. Sure, they involve a little more effort than cash but not that much more effort now that you don’t have to leave the house and join the queue in M&S to pick them up. Actually, in that respect, perhaps cash is not the lazier option anymore. You still can’t print banknotes off at home. Unless you’ve got a really good printer.

So, taking vouchers and money off the table, you’re left with no choice but to go to one of the big department stores and rifle through the “seasonal gifts” section until inspiration strikes or you go cross-eyed staring at walls of chocolate truffles and panettone.

Panettone. That weird cross between fruitcake and loft insulation that’s become ubiquitous over the past five years. Who actually eats panettone apart from the Italians? Yes, I understand it makes an excellent bread and butter pudding, but in my house, it makes February’s bird-food. Maybe Auntie Jill would like a panettone, though? Hang on. Didn’t she say she’s just signed up for Weight Watchers again?

Money’s out. Vouchers are out. Panettone’s for the birds. So you end up buying Jill a plastic waving Japanese cat thing to put on the kitchen windowsill. Your sister gets a novelty wine glass the size of her head. Your new squeeze gets a bright pink rubber mould that makes ice-cubes in the shape of false teeth. And a panettone.

Job done. Everybody’s happy. Or at least they’ll pretend to be. In reality, on Christmas morning, everyone will open something that makes them think, “I wish they’d just saved their money. I wish I’d saved mine…”

The annual ritual of presenting each other with utter tat makes nobody happy. It leaves us dissatisfied, disappointed, wondering how we’re going to pay January’s credit card bill and worse. The financial cost of all this swapping of rubbish is one thing. The environmental cost is something else.

Back in 2012, George Monbiot wrote a piece that summed the problem up. He called it “The Gift Of Death”. The silly novelty knick-knacks we feel obliged to give each other at Christmas are creating an ecological nightmare. How much of the plastic currently floating in our oceans started out beneath the Christmas tree? Monbiot wrote, “For 30 seconds of dubious entertainment ... we commission the use of materials whose impacts will ramify for generations ... Rivers are poisoned to manufacture talking fish.”

It’s clear that the rampant consumerism surrounding Christmas creates many problems but stopping the gift-giving merry-go-round is harder than it looks. As my friend Jane explained, “In the past, I’ve suggested to my family that instead of buying a dozen scrappy little gifts, each family member buys for just one other person. That way, we all get a single more expensive gift we actually want instead of 12 things that will be in the charity shop on the 27th. Everyone agrees but it’s hard to pull off. There’s always one person who doesn’t stick to the rules, who buys the single big gift and 11 small ones anyway. This causes everyone else to feel guilty, completely ruining the buzz they might have got from giving and receiving a single gift worth having.”

It’s not just at home. I’d like to take this opportunity to campaign for an end to the office Secret Santa. Whoever came up with the idea of Secret Santa was a troublemaker for sure. It brings out the passive-aggressive in everyone. At best you end up with cheap bath foam that brings you out in a rash. At worst, you end up with the sack. Why not have everyone stick a fiver in a kitty instead, then use that money to buy everyone a nice cake in the dog days of February?

This year, I won’t be buying Christmas presents for anyone to whom I would not also donate a kidney and I will be asking them to be extremely specific in telling me what they’d like. Because there’s nothing nicer than giving someone a gift that they actually want.

Christine Manby has written numerous novels including ‘The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club’