A Gift to Take Away?

With the Christmas season rolling around, thoughts naturally turn to gifts - mainly what to get people and, in this case, how i'm going to get them to people (i think that Amazon is going to do well of me this year). Anyway, with all this in mind, one naturally pays attention to the Christmas adverts that have noww started appearing on TV (although there are still not as many as i'd thought - i think Thanksgiving is keeping them at bay for the moment. It's quite refreshing right now). As you'd expect, a good sprinkling of adverts over here have something to do with food (it's the same in the UK) or a restaurant of some kind. Except with a greater variety of them over here, the quantity over here is perhaps a bit more.

What surprised me even more was the fact that a number of these restaurants now offer 'gift cards'. In other words, you can go into a restaurant, purchase a card and put money on it, then give it someone as a present. Now, the first thing that struck me was who on Earth would actually do that - but then i reasoned that people must do it otherwise the company wouldn't do it. I then tried to imagine what it would be like to receive such a card - again, i find it hard to believe that there are people out there who would be happy to receive one. But then I suppose that there are people who may not be as well off as most where such a thing would be fantastic. Ultimately, i realised that, whilst not the gift most on my mind (and don't worry, no one will be getting a McDonalds gift card off of me), it's the thought that counts. And in a world where Christmas is getting ridiculously materialistic , perhaps we all ought to remember that.