"i'm a guy - i don't buy cards or presents".. really?

Zebra3

What sort of person who is old enough to vote would want a card? Seriously? 🙄

Someone opens a card “oh that’s great”. Card is maybe looked at for five seconds at some stage in the future.

Waste of money and damaging the environment.

I have bought a few decent presents for big number birthdays for both women and men who are very close friends or family. It wouldn't be something I do very often though, and it's definitely not tokenistic Hallmark stuff or bottles of perfume and not for very many people.

I grew up in a household that was very non-sentimental about birthdays, mostly because they didn't want to count them and the older I get the more I can see why. I remember my granny in particular hated them. She'd an idea that if you acknowledged you were old, you'd suddenly become old and that some people were obsessed with birthdays. Her view was you hit 21 and stop counting.

If you wanted to buy her a present, you'd have been better off just picking a random day and turning up and saying "I saw this (practical item, like a yard brush or something). Then say: It was practically free! They were giving them away. I have a spare one! Do you want it?" Then she'd be going on about that great yard brush you got her for years.

If you bought her something fancy, "Ahhh! What did you waste your money on that auld thing for!"

She'd also be likely to just slip you a few quid in your hand weeks after your birthday and give you: "Now take that money and shut up! I'll have no arguments!"

I went out with someone who was extremely fixated on presents, cards, tokens of affection and so on and it drove me around the twist. I'd forget to buy something and I'd be in the bad books for months. I remember bringing back an present from a trip abroad and got told how thoughtless it was and how I'd put no effort in. I just didn't grow up with that and would keep forgetting stuff and it was always walking on eggshells.

Relationship didn't last. I was clearly dragged up without any Hallmark Love Day cards.

I dislike my birthday - not because I'm getting older, but because my mother always went to a lot of effort to make the day nice. Not with expensive gifts, but with little things like cooking my favourite dinner (I still can't cook steak the way she did) and making me a cheesecake. Now she has passed, celebrating the day without her just brings into sharp focus how much I miss her, and it doesn't feel right. So I prefer to let it slip by quietly.

I miss the sharp-witted, genuinely funny banter of that lot.

My grandparents are sadly all passed on, so's my mam (quite young and only a few years after my grandmother) -but they were all great craic and were more likely to start singing, playing the piano, dancing around the kitchen and cracking out the wine or putting on some random dinner thing too, but there'd just be no fuss or formality whatsoever around cards or wrapping paper or any of that stuff.

We often ended up having parties for no particular reason. The mood would just be in the air and people would drop in. The two houses were just always 'alive' with people calling in and it was just fun. There was never any money, especially in my grandparents' generation, but they all lived life to the max and seemed to never not have a decent lifestyle.

I really miss the big xmas dinners -- been quite hard to replicate in recent years. I might actually attempt to do one this year.

I've never been able to do the whole tokenistic stuff though. Just does nothing for me.

Aglomerado

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119735805#Comment_119735805

I'm with you, lovely to do nice things for people you love at any time of year.

CalamariFritti

In my world male friends don't do birthday presents. A few exceptions over the years may have been a bottle of whisky or so but few enough. Might have given/gotten a CD once, can't quite remember.

But a card??? Thats just a no.

FintanMcluskey

I would hazard a guess that 90% of men over the age of 35 aren't materialistic to the point where they either want or expect a card or gift for a birthday.

Those under 35 I'm not so sure. Getting into modern territory at that point.

BaywatchHQ

I don't buy my mother a card on birthdays as she throws them in the bin a few days later so I just buy a gift. I still have the cards I got on my first communion 22 years ago and childhood birthday cards from deceased grandparents. It is an autistic trait to keep things like that.

sporina

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119750135#Comment_119750135

"It is an autistic trait to keep things like that." - is it? says who?