"You can have this, I don't want it"

Such is my dismay over this annual post-Christmas ritual that I have become a raging regifter in response to it.

And, as the concept featured on Oprah, I no longer feel afraid to admit it. According to Wikipedia, regifting is the act of taking a gift that has been received and giving it to somebody else, sometimes in the guise of a new gift. Wikipedia sets out the following etiquette for regifting:

– rewrapping the gift;

– not using the gift before regifting it;

– and not giving the gift back to the original gift-giver.

Sri Lankans are actually almost compulsive in their dedication to regifting. I once had what I thought was a brilliant idea for an art-house film. The film would follow the path of a box of Lindt chocolates from its purchase on sale at Coles, to its gifting and re-gifting and re-re-gifting throughout the Sri Lankan community. If you GPS tagged the chocolate box you could actually plot an accurate map of most of the community’s location in Sydney. I got so excited by the idea I even wrote an outline for a Deepa Mehta-esque trilogy called Coriander, Cumin and Lindt.  Strangely, the Arts Council never emailed me back.

Every year, in the lead up to Christmas, I can be found surreptitiously squirrelling away a few presents before they make it onto the children’s present-radar. I do this because:

– the children have too many toys and more toys only make them want and feel entitled to more toys. (Seriously children, we currently have a Khun Zhu Pet plague in our house – how many mechanised kung-fu hamsters do you need?);

– I loathe Westfield and anything that minimises the number of trips I have to make to Toys R Us is a good thing, even stealing from my own children; and

– some tenuous environmental reason (landfill, recycling, etc etc).

I am highly selective about which toys I regift. I only choose toys that:

– require batteries that cost more than the toys themselves;

– are possessed and make uncontrollable noises in the middle of the night;

– perpetuate unhealthy gender stereotypes (eg. Bratz dolls and heavy artillery); and

– require surgical pliers to be removed from their box.

“Doubles” are also regifted unless it’s another light sabre, because you can never have too many of those. These toys will then make their way around the birthday parties of the North Shore and the Christmas parties of my extended family, finding other children to love or under-value them and saving me time, money and tantrums at K-Mart.

This Christmas, our children were given a fleet of Cars 2 merchandise (2011) which they added to their original Cars merchandise (2006). Thank you again Disney Pixar.  Weeks beforehand, I had already:

– squirrelled away the multiple Finn McMissile cars – such doubles were inevitable since the children learned to write letters to Santa which their grandparents, aunties and uncles all offered to post;

– put aside some toys for regifting; and

– dropped the rest off at the local Salvation Army Christmas Appeal

because I like gifts that keep on giving.

Shankari Chandran is a recent returner after ten years in London. Formerly a social justice lawyer, she now uses her skills to keep the peace at home. You can, and should, follow her blog here.

Are you a regifter? Received anything this Christmas that’s going straight to the regifting pile?