Tis the season

Ahhh... the joys of gift shopping... I'm very glad I finished last week.

I've been reading several articles in the paper and online about how popular gift cards are this year. And how they're such a great idea. And how they make your gift shopping so easy.

And I suppose they are an easy gift to buy. You don't have to search for the right size or color, or second guess whether they'll like the gift.

But for a shop-a-phobic like me, the gift card is usually not the gift that I get most excited about. I've received a few gift cards before - some of them have been appreciated because they were places where I regularly shop anyway and it was great to be able to go and pick out something I wanted. I've gotten other gift cards that sit in my wallet for months before I'd find the time to go to that particular store, and then sometimes it took a while to find something I actually wanted there.

The downside is, for someone like me, the time you save shopping for my gift just gets passed off on me. Giving a gift card that you don't know the person will love and use, just puts the burden on the recipient to spend the time you saved.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no scrooge, and I'm not against gift cards per se, but all this talk about gift cards lately has just got me thinking about them. They're fabulous for giving experiences - a trip to the movies, a day on a ski hill, an outing to the local amusement center - and sometimes you just know it's right (like if you gave me a card for amazon or chapters...) But I still like getting actual things.

After all, just imagine a Christmans morning just full of gift cards. A tree stacked with nothing but gift cards just isn't as much fun on the morning of the 25th.