bring out the guilt

So I 'm starting to feel a little guilt during the holidays. It's not because I'm a grinch (at least not more than usual), and it's not because I'm planning on presenting lumps of coal to my children this year. Rather, it has more to do with a decision that we made not to give gifts to adults anymore. We got tired of receiving them, and we don't really have the budget this year to give them, so we took them off the list and told our relatives. The problem? Our relatives ignored it and got us gifts anyway. I don't mind them getting the kids gifts, because Christmas presents are a kids whole existence this time of the year. but now I get to feel guilty because my relatives are spending so much more on us than we are on them.

For example, my sister sent us a large tin of Mrs. Fields cookies. Now at first I thought, "oh, cookies" and figured that wouldn't have spent so much, but when I considered ordering some for her in return, I discovered that she probably spent $40 on these. And they are good cookies, but $40??? Then she upped the ante by sending over a $50 gift certificate to Amazon. Geez! I'm considering using it to buy her a gift in return. Of course, my sister is pretty well off. She's in the medical field and makes a lot of money. But I can't help feeling like the family louse who doesn't give gifts because he is cheap. You know what we sent them? A homemade family slideshow that I created on my PC and burned onto DVDR. We also sent a few gifts for my niece, but they also sent us several gifts for our kids.

I even considered a quick regift to make up for it. That Bavarian crystal object that someone gave us that we'll never actually put out for decoration? Or perhaps a re-gift of some pseudo-fancy pens that I received last year from my sister's mother-in-law. Would she notice, though?

So I can't help but wondering if this makes me a bad person. Hopefully I will have more time next year to try and come up with something really nice to send the relatives. Perhaps it will still be inexpensive, but at least if it is homemade and well thought out, I won't feel so guilty about being the lame gift giver this year.