Singletary: Don’t add to holiday drama with bad gifts

“One out of every three gift recipients in the U.S. returned at least one gift item during the 2013 holiday season with the total dollars of returned gifts estimated at $262.4 billion (not including fraudulent returns),” Cohn writes. “This figure does not include unwanted gifts that are not returned but kept in a closet, regifted, sold, donated or thrown away.”

By combing through online message boards and conducting in-depth interviews, Cohn identified five categories of premeditated present selection that result in bad gift giving:

• Threats to self-concept. “This is when someone buys a gift to try to change someone,” Cohn said in an interview. “But you are threatening who they are.”

For instance, one wife told Cohn she hated the way her husband dressed.

“I buy a lot of clothes because he has horrible taste. I bought him burgundy pants, really dark burgundy pants and a silk shirt, and he’s worn it twice because I forced him.”

Really, that’s what she wanted, for him to resent his gift?

On one message board, a woman complained that her mother-in-law repeatedly gave her pregnancy tests for Christmas. “She was telling her, not so subtly, that it was time to get pregnant and be a mom,” Cohn wrote.

“These types of gifts are not a good idea,” Cohn said. “The recipients get angry. Think about who they are and not who you want them to be.”

• To you, for me. This would be the category for the big-screen TV husband.

You know you are buying the gift so that you can enjoy it. And you are not fooling anyone.

• Aggression. There are times when you are buying a gift and you know the person isn’t going to like it. “Spiteful gifts are a symptom of a deteriorating relationship,” Cohn writes in her paper.

Just before Christmas, a mother and her teenage daughter got into a fight. The mother gave the daughter a pocketknife and a Hershey bar along with a card that said: “Good luck in the wild.”

• Ritual and obligation. A lot of people fall into this category. There’s no mischief intended but no thought given either.

Let’s say there is an office gift exchange. You feel obligated to participate. But “you just get anything so that there is something to open at the event,” Cohn said.

• Bragging. These bearers of gifts really get on my nerves. Their intention is to show off.

“In the case of bragging, gifts are given to provide the giver with the ability to brag or ‘out-gift’ another giver,” Cohn writes.

This issue can blow up when, for example, grandparents ignore the wishes of parents who don’t want their children to receive lavish gifts, especially because these presents often come with bragging rights.

The holidays can already be full of a lot of drama. Don’t add to the tension by intentionally giving a bad gift.

Michelle Singletary welcomes comments and column ideas. Reach her in care of The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, DC 20071; or singletarym@washpost.com.