Wedding presents are an absurd tradition that have lived years—decades?—past their purpose. It is time for them to stop.
Marrying couples are now rarely in the position of “setting up a household,” the original intention of the post-wedding deluge of toaster ovens and salad spinners. “Wedding presents for modern cohabitating adults with established households are in the pure realm of deadweight loss—you’re buying things for people that they haven’t bought for themselves because they think they’re overpriced,” he wrote. “And in a society where a large and growing share of the population never marries, the custom is both unfair and inefficient.”
I've been to maybe 20/25 weddings in my life and maybe ONE of them had that "let's help these youngsters start their lives together!" feeling; the other 99.999% were purely performative affairs for people who already had everything they needed and more, and we're all supposed to pretend it's not super-weird that we're all looking at some list these couple put on a website for us to choose from with as little thought as possible, all so after the most chaotic, already-stupid day of their lives they're theoretically supposed to be able to haul off a mountain of presents. Fuck that shit. I'm all for giving cash, or admitting to each other that adults giving prescribed gifts to each other (I'm looking at you, Christmas) is just fucking stupid and adds a level of anxiety that is 100% unnecessary.
"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you totally crush it at weddings back in the day?"
Sigh. Yes I did, faithful reader
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