Christmas gift event gone wrong
I feel like I’m not that important to my friends, just four of us. We do secret santa every year so I wanted to change things up and do white elephant. One person wasn’t fine with it because it felt too troublesome to give a gift everyone would be happy with. This friend mentioned how gift giving is on the least of their priorities. This really hurt because christmas has always been my favorite holdiay and favorite time of the year. I make this known about me to my friends so they understand how much I love this time. I feel worse for feeling bad because this friend was only saying this because they’re stressed about school and place a lot of importance on getting good grades. They spend a lot of time studying and doing homework so they don’t have a lot of time on other things. So, we decided on joke gifts (funny gifts no one would take seriously). Another didn’t like this because they wanted the gifts to be personalized. Y’know, something they would actually like. (Side rant: i find this ironic because every year I tell everyone that I like my gifts wrapped with wrapping paper, they can give me the worst gift in existence as long as it’s in wrapping paper. That same friend that wants their gift to be personalized gives me a gift in a bag. Now that i’m writing this i feel like i should just be grateful they even give me a gift instead of acting spoiled.) So, I tried to meet in the middle. I suggested doing $10 for secret santa and $20 dollars for white elephant. (Our budget is $30) One of them mentioned that $10 can’t get you anything in this economy so i suggested $20 for secret santa and $10 for white elephant. Since white elephant would just be a silly gift, i assumed 10 would be enough. Again, this was rejected. Then someone suggested to just do normal christmas, giving one gift to every friend. At this point I’ve already given up on doing white elephant. Then, the same friend who wanted a personalized gift suggested $10 gift/person because the budget was 30. This is valid logic but it hurts because we agreed that you can’t get anything good and personalized for $10 in this economy. We’re all students though so maybe this friend just doesn’t have enough money. If only one or two of all the things i just mentioned happened, i would still be fine. I’d only be a little angry but i can handle that. But i was hurt too may times this time. The start of this convo was actually planning a date. That was already tiring enough because everyone had a lot of requirements and i was the one most actively suggesting dates and asking for people’s availabilities. I just wanted to cry at this point, but then it’s time for dinner and i just so happened to be eating at my aunt’s. So it’s my entire family and their family. Now i was just trying to hold my tears in at a public setting. I’m just tired of feeling like my friends dont place importance on me.
Posted Dec 7, 2025, 11:54 PM UTC