Try alternative giving this holiday season

Do you remember alternative rock? I think everyone has a soft spot for bands like Everclear,… Do you remember alternative rock? I think everyone has a soft spot for bands like Everclear, Pearl Jam and Third Eye Blind. Today, I’d like to tell you about something just as good called “alternative giving.”

Alternative giving is this jawn where you make a donation to a charity in someone’s name, instead of giving him a present.

It’s simply amazing what some small sacrifice on your part can do for someone in the Third World.

Many charities now let you pick how the money is spent from a “alternative gift catalogue,” which is fun and can make it more personal: I got my mom maternity care for someone who couldn’t afford it for Mother’s Day!

Charities with such gift catalogues include: Heifer International, OxFam and Christian Children’s Fund. They will send a cute card with a picture of some cute kid enjoying the gift to the recipient, unless the gift is a vaccination – which isn’t cute to look at – in which case, the picture will just be the kid running around without polio.

This might blow your mind like the crescendo of 4/4 distorted power chords at 130 bpm that you might expect from the likes of The Cranberries. You’re probably wondering, “Why would I give someone a donation when I could give the Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream?” This is a legitimate question, and there are situations where alternative giving is and isn’t appropriate. Let’s take a look.

Appropriate:

For your parents and other recipients who are too old to appreciate hits like “Semi-Charmed Life”: Their income is large relative to yours. If you buy them a gift worth $X, chances are they value it as less than $X or they would have bought it already. Also, in most cases, an important component of your parents’ consumption is that it’s chosen personally.

Your mom enjoys the towels she buys for her bathroom, but more so, she enjoys picking them out – looking at catalogs, reading Southern Living, talking to friends – in short: realizing a vision for the bathroom.

What your parents enjoy about buying the decorations that account for much of their small-ticket consumption is that they constitute some form of self-expression. Having the decorations selected by a third party voids much of the expressive potential. They will say thank you, but they will not value it proportionally to your financial sacrifice.

What about gift certificates? As above, no gift certificate will appreciably improve your parents’ welfare. The big advantage that mainstream gifts – like vinyls of Rage’s sophomore effort Evil Empire – maintain over alternative gifts is that, first, it’s fun to open up the boxes; and second, a thoughtful mainstream gift vouches for an intimate knowledge of a recipient’s tastes and thereby makes them feel special. A gift certificate does neither. It says, “I didn’t care enough to buy you something, but I wanted to restrict your options.”

When you don’t know what to get someone, alternative gifts say, “I think you’re the type of person who takes pleasure in others’ gladness.” That might or might not be true of the recipient, but she likely enjoys believing that other people think so. Getting alternative gifts is flattering, like getting Fugazi’s Repeater: You might not like it, but you’re glad that the giver thinks your aesthetic sense is refined enough to enjoy jilted rhythms from the legendary Ian MacKaye.

For liberals: Imagine a liberal telling his liberal friends about how much he enjoyed his donation to OxFam.

That is some easy imagining. Add a note reading, “You’ve already got a library card and Radiohead’s Pablo Honey. I couldn’t think of anything else you’d want!”

In combination: Don’t feel bad that you still want to give something special to a loved one. But maybe instead of a thoughtful, expensive present, buy a thoughtful, affordable present and combine it with an alternative gift. That way, you show you think of the recipient and you’ve hedged your bet, kind of like The Descendents’ release Somery, which mobs all their best songs into a 27-track riot that leaves you wanting more.

Not Appropriate:

For a poor, African child: I did this last year.

The kid hated it. He wanted to find the lucky bastard that got his vaccines and take that punk out. Then he did find him in a nearby village, and it turns out there’s no vaccine for a good ass-kicking. Total disaster.

When the recipient is a vile human being: If that hollow waste of breath can’t look past the pathetic confines of his monotone life, then an alternative gift isn’t the best option.

Maybe switching his toothpaste with foot-cream is the best option. Or a .357 with a single bullet wrapped in “Family Circus” comics is the best option.

Please, consider alternative giving. To start the trend, I’ll go ahead and say it, readers: Only send me alternative gifts this year.

You can send those gifts to ljl10@pitt.edu.