Gift giving can be a painstaking task. Besides birthdays and holidays such as Christmas, there are so many other small and niche occasions like housewarming parties, dinner hosting events, and baptisms that there is no one-size-fits-all protocol to follow. The last thing I personally want to engage in is buying gifts that either end up as clutter in someone’s home, or get tossed into the re-gifting pile (though this is so handy at times if I am to be completely honest).
Gift giving is a delicate act of balancing cost, occasion relevance and to some extent the closeness of relationship between the giver and receiver. Growing up, I had always loved the concept of party bags at parties. It was my favourite thing about going to them. A little token of appreciation for the person making the effort to attend; and it is something I have clung to. Last weekend, I indulged some of my friends at home for a ‘Galentine’ party, the unofficial Valentine celebration for girls and friendship. Naturally I couldn’t let my guests leave without goodie bags, but what I was most delighted by was the fact that almost everyone came with a little token, not just for me but for all the girls. Like I said, there is no rule book.