ALT-1 How to Accept a Gift Graciously
Sometime during your life, a relative, or friend will give you a gift, which you do not like. It can be difficult to know what to do. You could be cruel, unkind, and brutally honest, and tell the giver that you hate the gift, that they chose for you. There are many things wrong with that reaction.
Think about when you choose a gift for someone; if you are a caring person, you think carefully about the person for whom you are buying the gift, before ever actually going shopping for the gift. You think about what they like, their lifestyle, and their hobbies, and try to think about the kind of gift that you think they would enjoy. Then you go shopping, and traipse round several shops before you find exactly what you envisaged. You purchase it with your hard-earned money. You find some pretty wrapping paper and carefully wrap the gift. If, after all your hard work, the recipient told you that they hated the carefully chosen present, over which you had taken so much care and effort, how would you feel, hurt, rejected, upset, and humiliated, probably. Would you like to make anyone else feel like that?
A gift, whether it is for Christmas, a birthday, an anniversary or any celebration, is not a right, no one has to buy you a present, no matter what the occasion. What is increasingly forgotten, in this material World, is that a gift is a token, or symbol, of the love and the thought that comes with it, and that is the important thing, not the gift itself.
If an elderly relative has taken the time, and trouble, to buy yarn and knit you a vibrant purple scarf, good manners dictate that you should say "thank-you very much indeed, Auntie", and appreciate the love that she has knitted into every stitch, her effort in knitting the scarf, and her kind thought in making you something to keep out the cold.
Well-mannered people never make anyone else feel uncomfortable, about anything. There are many appropriate responses to someone giving you a gift. They include "What an original gift, thank-you so much,""How lovely, thank-you," "How kind of you to think of me, thank-you," and for a home-made gift, "You must have worked so hard on this, thank-you very much".
Appreciate the love and thought that comes with the present, even if you cannot appreciate the object itself. Accepting a gift graciously is one of the life skills that everyone should learn.
