Reddit Wants To Know If Asking For Birthday Presents Is Rude If There's No Party
“Maybe this is a new thing kids are doing?”
Once your kids hit a certain age, you become an expert in the social complexities of children’s birthday parties. Who you “have to” invite, how much to spend on the gift, when you should arrive, whether you should stay or go as a parent.
But a recent post on Reddit’s popular Parenting subreddit is a new one for even the most veteran parent. “I'm just wondering if this seems odd,” writes user Tricky-Sport-139 (we’ll call them Tricky). “Maybe this is a new thing kids are doing?”
She explains that she got an invitation for a birthday party for her kid’s friend from the child’s mother on Facebook. No surprise there; the children had attended one another’s parties in the past.
“I open the invitation expecting to see a date, time, place,” Tricky explains. “But instead it just says they're deciding to try an online party.”
Now, I see “Online Party” and, after I get over the mild Pandemic PTSD, I think “OK, a Zoom party for some reason?” Apparently not.
“The way that works is you just order her stuff and have it sent to this address,” Tricky continues. Apparently the rest of the invite was a list of things the child likes and concludes with a message offering a Venmo option.
“This seems a little odd to me?” Tricky says. “If it was a family member, I could see that, but sending out invitations for classmates to just send her gifts...idk is this a new way of celebrating birthdays that I've just never heard about? Skip the party and just ask for stuff?”
In edits to the post, Tricky explains that apparently the birthday girl wanted to go for a weekend instead of having a party... but apparently didn’t want to miss out on presents from her friends.
The audacity did not stop there.
“The mom went and copied and pasted what she wrote in the invitation ... ON HER NEWSFEED!” she exclaims. “So now it's not just the handful of us, who usually attend her birthday parties, that she's asking for presents from: it's now everyone who is on her friends list.”
The consensus from more than 200 commenters was overwhelmingly appalled.
“Beyond rude… delete and ignore,” said the most upvoted comment and we could honestly leave it there, but there were some funnier suggestions we would be remiss not to mention.
“I almost admire the hustle,” said another redditor. “I’d RSVP ‘no’ as though it was a real party. ‘Sorry, we have a conflict— wish we could have made it, HBD to [daughter]!’ Just for kicks.”
When one commenter said this was a reversal of a trend they had been seeing (“no presents; just your presence”) another joked, “Maybe all the no-gifts people could send their gifts to that kid,” they quipped. “If anyone is thinking of having this kind of party I've come up with a way to word it for you: Your presence is not present enough, in fact, we don't want to see you at all. Gifts only!”
We hope this child has a wonderful birthday and that her parents gain just a little bit of decorum moving forward.
