My brother's present was super cute - from the stall that they held at school, my brother bought for Mom a small Dalmatian puppy plushie and a black cosmetics bag. It made me want to be a Mom- okay, just kidding, it was actually just more on the lines of wanting to receive cute things rather than having to go through.....oh, you know what I mean!
On a slightly more thoughtful side, today made me think quite a bit about the idea of giving presents. As people's financial statuses improve, I've realised that they begin to place a greater significance on the monetary value of the present rather than the actual present.
If a present is predominantly given to make a person happy, why would you just select something random based on it's monetary value. And what's even stranger, is that for the receiver, why would you be happy with whatever present they give you so long as it's monetary value is higher than what you expected? Isn't the 'thought', the selection process where the person actually considers your individual person, more important than "Gee, how much is this worth"?
Well, I guess that being in a world going increasingly materialistic doesn't quite help in discouraging this type of mentality. Though really, regardless of how desperately you need money, there should be certain elements in your life where money does not have to interfere with.