A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with my friend Jane (not her real name). Usually a woman of serenity and good cheer, on this day she seemed millimeters away from clawing at the tablecloth and letting loose with Edvard Munchesque screams. OK, I exaggerate slightly. In fact, there was no cloth on the laminate tabletop at the pizza-by-the-slice joint we'd settled on. Which was probably just as well: Clawing at Formica only makes you feel more frustrated and ineffectual.

Jane had been shopping for her grown children, all of whom have asked her not to. Well, OK, one of them didn't ask in so many words. But, the last time she'd visited him, she'd noticed the gorgeous vintage Hawaiian shirt she'd given him the year before on top of a pile of things in his front hall. Laundry? Dry cleaner? Nope. That pile was headed to the local thrift shop. (I would've grabbed the shirt and stuffed it under my coat when no one was looking, but Jane is made of sterner stuff and pretended she hadn't seen it.)

The girls are worse, though they're more straightforward about it. They've gently asked her to please, please not buy them more things. Because there's always something wrong with them. Colour, style, cut, something.

What do you expect now that we all live sealed up in our own little market niches, divided and subdivided by generation, culture, subculture, taste, frame of reference, musical preference, political stance, warring assumptions about the desirability of ziplocking the new sofa into a plastic slipcover versus ripping the cellophane off the new lampshades?

A million years ago, when Jane and I were children, any new thing was greeted with delight. We weren't disappointed when the festively wrapped boxes under the tree disgorged socks for school and practical flannel pajamas. We didn't even check the labels to see if they were cool flannel pajamas. Labels didn't matter then. Nobody ever wailed, "Oh, but I wanted Prada!" There was no Prada.

Now there are too many choices, too many different kinds of everything, each freighted with its miniload of cultural meaning. To give a cheery red Lanz flannel nightgown to somebody who (you should be able to tell) wants a slinky-but-simple charcoal-gray Donna Karan sleep T is worse than giving nothing. It's an admission of obtuseness.

Last year, economist Joel Waldfogel calculated that such mismatches add up to $20 billion down the drain each year – money that's lost, wasted, gone for nothing. This year, with cash short and economic prospects gloomy, recipients of unloved presents are expected to make more of an effort to recapture their value by returning them for cash or credit instead of just stuffing them in the back of the closet. (For one thing, who has room in the back of the closet for stuff they don't want? As a nation, we're already renting 2.21 billion square feet of self-storage space to store things that we do want but don't have room for.)

The National Retail Federation expects that 8.7 percent of all the merchandise purchased in 2008 will be returned – up from 7.3 percent a year ago. Holiday purchases account for just under 22 percent of all merchandise returned. (On the bright side, again according to the National Retail Federation, more than half of retailers are loosening up their return policies for the holidays this year – though not to the point of taking back things bought eight years ago that somebody found in the back of a closet and regifted you with.)

The obvious solution, when your loved one has inscrutable taste, and already has everything anyway, is a gift card. But, in a retail environment where practically everything seems to be marked down 50 to 70 percent, and almost everybody's worried about what's coming next, gift cards are a harder sell than usual. According to the NRF, only 24.3 percent of shoppers had purchased gift cards by December 15, compared to 30.2 percent at the same time last year. No wonder: When a determined bottom-feeder can find $100 cashmere sweaters for $50, $40, maybe even $30, a $100 gift card that still costs $100 looks ridiculously overpriced.

Maybe it's time to rethink. The custom of giving gifts at Christmas and Hanukah survives from a time when material goods were scarce, and most people needed more, and one thing was much like another, and branding had yet to be invented. Choosing a present that would be appreciated was not difficult.

Now, by contrast, we're drowning in stuff, and don't need more. Our tastes are absurdly particular, so even if we want something, you'll never figure out what it is. And if you give us something else, we'll think less of you for it, and then feel guilty for our ingratitude, and then we'll give it to Goodwill anyway. It's a lose/lose proposition.

So maybe it's time we thought of some other way to celebrate. I know somebody who for years exchanged one hundred dollar bills with a friend of his each Christmas, a transaction that left each feeling munificent and none the poorer for it. We could write haiku for each other. Or we could trade Santa Claus jokes by e-mail. Or we could give the people we love worthless but interesting found objects that they could toss into the recycling bin with a clear conscience.

Think about this: Maybe you'll have a better idea while you're standing in line to exchange the awful sweater Aunt Martha sent you.

Write to Patricia McLaughlin c/o Universal Press Syndicate, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, Missouri 64106, USA or patsy.mcl@verizon.net">patsy.mcl@verizon.net