Island Life Magazine Ltd December/January 2018 | Page 40

Notebook
The gift that keeps on giving
Thousands of unwanted Christmas presents will be thrown away in
the coming weeks, but what is the best way to get rid of gifts
You probably won’t want to hear
this as you desperately scour the
shops and the internet for quirky,
imaginitive Christmas presents –
but the fact is, that once all that
sparkly wrapping paper has been
torn off and consigned to the
rubbish bin, your carefully-chosen
gifts stand a pretty good chance of
ending up at the back of a drawer
or, worse yet, as a listing on an
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auction site come early 2018.
In fact, in the first two weeks of
January this year, over 4,500 new
items were listed on auction site
eBay as “unwanted Christmas
gifts”. Sad but true.
Along with pop star-named
perfumes and silly cartoon
character ties and slippers, one of
the most popular (or unpopular,
depending on how you look at it)
gift choices was a Primark ‘onesie’,
of which there were 200-odd
unwanted and unworn examples
going begging at auction.
So – onesie-buyers beware!
Would your loved one really like
greeting the postman dressed as a
fluffy panda, unicorn or tiger?
According to one writer there’s a
definite etiquette about the whole
business of the ‘unwanted gift’.