How many times a year do you have to buy a Birthday present or Wedding Anniversary gift? Or do you leave it to your partner to do all the gift buying? Even if you leave it all to your partner there must be a few occasions when you have to buy a gift or present for them, either on their birthday or at Christmas.
Do you tramp round the high street stores looking for an idea of what to buy or do you know what to buy and look for the stores that sell the gift you want to buy? There are two groups of gift buyers, those who love looking for gifts and presents to buy and those who find it a chore and struggle to find a suitable gift.
There are many occasions throughout the year when gifts or presents are given. The annual gift giving events are birthdays, anniversaries, Valentines day, Mothers day, Fathers day, and Christmas. On top of these there are the special events like births, special birthdays like 18th, 21st, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th, 80th,90th,100th.
Next are Wedding gifts, which start with engagement presents then the actual Wedding gifts followed by each anniversary celebration. With Wedding anniversaries we have the milestones starting with the 1st which is Paper, 2nd is Cotton, 3rd is Leather, 4th is Books, 5th is Wood, 6th is Iron, 7th is Wool, 8th is Bronze, 9th is Pottery, 10th is Tin, 11th is Steel, 12th is Silk, 13th is Lace, 14th is Ivory, 15th is Crystal, 20th is China, 25th is Silver, 30th is Pearl, 35th is Coral, 40th is Ruby, 45th is Sapphire, 50th is Golden, 55th is Emerald, 60th is Diamond.
Other events that require a gift or present are the birth of a baby and next is the Christening, followed by graduation gifts, housewarming presents, get well gifts and not forgetting the sorry gift. Some in between gifts are new school, passing exams, passing driving test, leaving work, thank you, in hospital, moving away in fact the card and gift companies will invent occasions to give cards and gifts.
For those of us that struggle to either think of a different gift or don’t like trailing around the high street stores we now have the Internet to give us the ideas and they can even get the gift or present delivered to the door for us. If you love gift giving please read the next part but if you loath gift giving you may want to stop reading now.
Scenario: If you and your partner both live to 80 and got married when you were 25 and had two children by your 30th and had 10 close relatives that you always buy gifts for them you might be pleasantly surprised to know that over your lifetime you will probably give or be given:
80 birthdays each = 160 gifts, 55 Wedding Anniversaries each = 110 gifts, 55 Mothers days = 55 gifts, 55 Fathers days = 55 gifts, 60 Valentines days each = 120 presents, 80 Christmas days each = 160 gifts, Add a selection of Weddings, get wells, sorry gifts and modestly add 10 presents each year for 55 years = 550 presents. This list of presents adds up to 1,210 based on only one present per occasion per couple.
Now add into this the present you will give and receive from friends and relatives over your lifetime which could easily be the same as the total amount of gifts you have given or received 1,210 gifts x 10 relatives = 12,100 friends and relative gifts + 1,210 your gifts = 13310 gifts or presents you buy and receive. That is also probably 13,310 greeting cards you will buy and 13310 gift raps too. That means every couple will buy 166 presents on average every year.
If you take the UK has a population of 60 million and assume only 20 million are gift giving couples. Then the amount of present giving and receiving each year by couples is 166 gifts x 10 million couples = 1,660,000,000 gifts. Which are 4,547,945 gifts bought per day.
If the other 40 million UK residents only give gifts on birthdays then that equates to 123,288 presents bought everyday. In the US you can times these figures by 5 times.
On the other hand you may be horrified, unless you are a gift, card or rapping supplier.