In March or April the Republic of Ireland made a rule that packages cannot be sent surface to other countries anymore. They only allow airmail now. My mother-in-law lives in Ireland and enjoys selecting and sending gifts to our kids, her grandkids, for birthdays and Christmas. Unfortunately, because of the airmail only thing she probably won’t be able to do that anymore. She sent a package of Christmas presents last week. The cost to ship? About $144. Absolutely insane. It’s hardly worth it when the gifts very well could cost less than the shipping. And for a widow on a small widow’s pension, it’s pretty much not worth it at all. So in the future she’ll have things sent to us from Amazon or some other website or do a dreaded gift card (hey, I did say when a gift has to be shipped gift cards are a good idea!). It’s not the same, though.

In a slightly related side note, I do wonder about the knowledge of geography some postal workers possess. The first time we sent something to my in-laws after they moved over there I said it was going to the Republic of Ireland and specifically said it is the one that is not part of the UK. The postal worker than spent about 5 minutes trying to convince me it would make more sense to send it to Northern Ireland since it is cheaper to send packages there than to the Republic of Ireland. I said that is true, but as they did not live in Northern Ireland so it wouldn’t make any sense at all. I finally convinced her to charge me the shipping cost to the more expensive Ireland. As I left I noticed her looking at the person next to her and she said she couldn’t believe I didn’t want to save money sending that package. The woman next to her shook her head and said some people just don’t understand. Right… like that Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are two different countries…

I am not thrilled with the proliferation of gift cards. Granted, I do get one occasionally to give to someone, but it’s never the only part of the gift. I view gift cards as a complement to the rest. It seems to me there could at least be something selected especially for the person even if it’s very small. The exception to this is when mailing gifts. In that case I think gift cards are smart since postage can cost as much or more than the gift itself.

Every “Thanksgiving” (I put that in quotes because we had that dinner the first Saturday of November) we draw names with some of our extended family. This year I had to draw 12 names. 5 for our family, 5 for my brother’s family, and 2 for my parents. More than half the names I drew all they wanted was gift cards. One even detailed no less than 5 places he’d like a gift card to. I’ll take my aunt’s list of “a good book or a good movie” over a list of places to get a gift card from any day. There’s just something intensely impersonal about a gift card.

On New Year’s Day we will have our “Christmas” celebration at my aunt’s house (remember my post about not celebrating things on the “right” day…). We will open the gifts from the name drawing of “Thanksgiving.” And it will be boring. Absolutely boring. I remember those days before gift cards were all people put down. It was so fun when someone would hold up what they got while calling across the room “Thanks, [insert name here]!” And we’d all look and see what they got. Now it seems most of the gifts are in the form of a gift card. Nothing to see there.

Now, when we made our lists I did include one gift card option for each of us except Fritz. If whomever drew our names is so inclined as to get us a gift card (they are certainly easy to find after all), fine, but it was the last thing on our lists with three or four other ideas. I’d really prefer one of the other things.