This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2501.
Just your presence, not your presence.
Gifting etiquette in American culture.
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When you get invited to a party, how do you know whether you should bring a gift or not?
Today we dive into all of the nuances and calculations to make this decision.
In american culture.
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Hey, Michelle, how are you today?
I'm doing well, Lindsay.
How are you?
Good.
What are we talking about on the show today?
Well, I want to know when is the last time that you had a traditional birthday party?
Oh, my gosh.
How do we define a traditional birthday party? answering a question with a question, Michelle.
I guess there were invitations.
There was a gathering.
It wasn't kind of a.
It's not something where you say hey, you guys want to go grab dinner for my birthday on the weekend.
Not something like that, like a planned thing.
Well, this past year we went to Steamboat for the weekend and I invited a few friends, but there were no invitations.
It was just text messages and We traveled up there, got an Airbnb and went to the rodeo, which was fun.
But I don't think it was a traditional birthday party.
So it's been a long time.
What about you, Michelle?
When was the last time you sent out invitations for a birthday party?
Not for myself.
I have no idea.
But...
I am working on planning my dad's birthday party.
He's going to be 75.
So we are putting together a birthday party for him.
And I actually have to send the invitations out there.
They're online invitations.
So that's.
It's so much easier these days.
Um, that'll be fine.
Yeah.
But my dad is very adamant that he doesn't want gifts.
So we might put something on the invitation.
Like we want your presence, not your presence.
Um, Have you heard of that?
When people say that?
This is my first time I've heard of this, but I like it and I get it.
And our listeners are going to get it by the time we finish today's episode.
Fun.
Yeah.
We're going to dissect this today.
This is a... common way that people say don't give gifts.
So this could be on an invitation.
So we're going to talk about what it actually looks like.
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Perfect.
All right.
So let's let's talk about it.
So presence and presence are homophones.
So that means that they sound the same, but the meanings are not the same.
So presence, let's go through one of them.
So we want your presence.
P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E.
Exactly.
So what does that mean, Lindsay?
We want your presence.
This means that we basically want you to be present.
We want you to be at the party.
Your physical presence is what we want.
Now, so, but when we say not your presence, we would spell that P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S.
So what's that, Lindsay?
So that is just gifts, right?
Just gifts.
Yep.
Yeah.
So the whole thing, we want your presence, not your presence.
That's kind of a cute way of saying we want you to be at the party.
We want you to come, but we don't need your gifts.
We don't want you to have to buy a gift.
Yeah.
And I think this is more seen on invitations to adults parties, especially birthday parties.
Right.
Not this, but not not a wedding or an engagement party or anything like that.
Right.
But you may see it on a kid's invitation if the parents don't want the gifts.
But it's less likely because the kids want the gifts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this is not something that you would see on any other kind of invite, like a funeral.
You wouldn't see this right.
On a funeral you might see like.
In lieu of gifts, you know, send a donation to this society, that society.
Um, it's really just for positive celebrations, right?
Birthdays, kids.
Yeah.
Cause it's cute.
It's a cute expression.
You wouldn't use it for anything serious.
It's light.
And you wouldn't, you wouldn't really use it for a wedding either.
As you said, Michelle, right?
Not really.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's informal.
It's light.
So not a fancy wedding.
But Lindsay.
So if you were invited to a birthday party and it said this on the invitation, would you still bring a gift?
That's the big question.
It's a tough one.
No one knows what to do.
The tissue paper and things have been – and I show up with nothing because I think the person doesn't want a gift.
But then this other person brought a gift.
It becomes a real head trip, Michelle.
It's true.
Yeah.
So –
I guess it kind of depends on your relationship with the person, your history of your personal routine regarding gifts with that person.
Right.
Like, do you and that person tend to exchange gifts?
Then, yeah, I probably would bring it.
But if I'm not as close, close enough for that with the person, then I would probably consider that message to say yeah, I don't need to bring a gift.
Yeah, it is.
It is really tough.
Yeah.
I mean listen like if if you OK Lindsay, if you really really aren't sure, do you think it's safer to bring something or not bring something?
I think if it's a big party, you're probably okay.
If you know a lot of people are coming to this party, you're going to have a little more anonymity.
So you can probably get away with not having a gift.
But I think in general, if it's going to be a small intimate group let's say maybe going to a restaurant or something You might want to err on the side of bringing something, but also that you then don't want to be in that position of embarrassing other people who didn't bring something.
So you want to make it like a private gift giving thing.
So there's a lot that goes into this.
And guys, this is, this is, you know, for native speakers this is just as confusing yeah um, because it's so nuanced and it really depends.
I mean, i don't think you can go wrong either way.
Um, if I were to see that and I really really, really wasn't sure I would probably just bring something, just you know.
But I also see what you mean about not making other people uncomfortable.
Oh, Oh, my gosh.
I think the biggest thing is don't think into it that much.
I think Lindsay and I would probably think into it a lot.
Yeah.
Because we're we're like to worry.
You can always like.
If you're worried about embarrassing other people, you think other people are not bringing a gift.
You could always send.
A virtual gift card or something you know, so only that person knows by text message or something that you have gifted them something.
Yeah, that's a good workaround, Lindsay.
Yeah, yeah.
But then you risk that everyone else brought a physical gift and you're the one sitting there.
And sometimes it happens that someone's gotten me a gift, but I haven't gotten them a gift.
And then I feel terrible.
This happens sometimes to me.
And I didn't know, you know, that we were exchanging gifts.
Oh, gosh, Michelle, cringe.
Yeah, very awkward situation.
Yeah.
All right, we'll take a quick break.
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So, Michelle, what else might we see?
I think I mentioned this earlier.
You mentioned this one.
You know, sometimes people might ask for a donation.
Right.
So in lieu of gifts. please consider making a donation too.
And yeah, you're right.
This does happen a lot, especially when there's been a death, right?
They might say they're not going to say in lieu of gifts because no one's really giving.
They might say in lieu of flowers.
That's what we say.
Yes.
Yeah.
Right.
Please.
You know.
So if the person passed away from an illness, they might make it to research to cure that illness or whatever it may be.
But in lieu of gifts.
Yes, you got it.
You got it.
And then what else, Michelle?
What else do we want to share with our listeners today?
Yeah.
We also wanted to talk about one more time.
People may say they don't need or want something, but you may consider bringing it anyway.
And we've talked about this a little bit, but I just wanted to touch on it before we go.
So this is when you're invited to someone's house.
And I actually, this just happened to me.
My friend invited me.
It was totally last minute dinner.
And you might say, what can I bring?
And they might say, just yourself.
Have you heard that?
Very common.
Yeah.
But then it's tricky.
You have to think, hmm, I know better.
Right.
Because, you know, at least in American culture, this is kind of an etiquette episode.
Right.
Right.
In American culture, you really shouldn't show up empty-handed to a dinner when someone else is cooking.
So easy go-to is just bring a bottle of wine or like an appetite.
I think the simplest thing is a bottle of wine.
I think you said you like to bring flowers sometimes.
Did you say that before?
I have brought flowers.
Yeah, I can bring flowers, but...
Wine is definitely the easiest one.
Um, actually the the one where my friend just invited me.
I think was actually after I planned this episode.
Okay.
So, and so, um, basically what I did so okay I have these friends and we go over to each other's house a lot so we kind of have this joke because one of the ways that we became good friends was we made a key well my one friend made us all a key lime pie mmm And so that's kind of been our joke for our entire friendship is whenever we always bring someone like lime flavored chips or lime popcorn or any key lime cookies, something like that.
I didn't have time for that.
So in this case, I just brought a bag of popcorn just to bring something.
You know, it's interesting if you have friends where you're really close.
Yeah.
It's different than if someone invites you who you don't know that well.
And then you might want to really bring something.
Yeah, yeah.
The closer you are, the more you can get away with just like a jokey thing or even nothing, I guess.
But yeah, if it's like new friends or couple friends or three steps removed friends where you're just trying to know them, that yeah, we want to air.
Come back.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, we are going to do kind of a sample quest, a conversation if you're not sure.
Okay.
Here a little role play, okay.
So here i was invited to your house for a game night.
Okay nice, all right, here we go.
Okay, so what can i bring just yourself?
No really seriously, Okay.
Sure.
Just your presence, not your presence.
Okay.
That's cute.
That's cute.
I'm going to have to use that.
That's fun.
Yes.
All right.
Let's go through our role play here.
So again, it's very common that people would say just yourself.
So our listeners are going to get this.
They're going to hear this.
Right.
This is really common.
Yep.
Yep.
So you said, okay, so what can I bring?
And I said, just yourself.
Right.
And this could also be a text stream.
Yes, absolutely.
This could be for sure.
I'm looking at it.
It looks like a perfect text conversation as well.
And I said, no, really.
So what did I mean when I said no, really?
You said you're just saying it's true, right?
Yeah.
You're saying you're questioning.
You're saying, no, really, what should I really bring?
I know you want me to bring myself.
Don't make a joke.
I really want to bring something.
And then you said, seriously.
Seriously.
Right.
So we're kind of going back and forth.
You're saying don't bring something.
I'm saying I want to bring something.
And then you said you came up in this situation.
It's kind of a joke because it's not really formal.
But you said just your presence, not your presence.
Nice.
Love it.
Love it.
It is complicated, Michelle. you know, the gifting piece is complicated.
There's a lot, there's a real social, um, calculation that goes into that, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
So it's something really good to be aware of.
Um, Guys, check out episode 2482.
That was agreeable ways to agree in English.
Nice.
What's our takeaway for today?
Like I said, this has been kind of an American culture etiquette episode, which could apply.
If you're having dinner with a business contact or maybe there's like a colleague, maybe you and your partner and a colleague and their partner are getting together.
So it's a blending the lines between business and life, right?
Yeah.
Could apply to a lot of scenarios.
Yeah, I mean, I would say that it's always, you can't go wrong with bringing a little something.
Yeah, you really can't.
Unless I know Lindsay was saying you know, maybe you make somebody else feel bad, but you know okay.
If you're good, you could be subtle.
You could bring something small.
Yeah.
I think you don't have to be like, here's my gift.
Yeah.
Where's everyone else's right now.
Yeah.
Oh, you didn't get anything.
Oh, I did.
Yeah.
Just don't need to be that, you know, that big in terms of the scene.
Right.
You can be very subtle.
It could be a card with a little gift card in it.
You can slip it to the person in a subtle way at a subtle moment.
So I agree with you, Michelle.
I think it's always better to come with something in hand.
Yeah.
I think if you're not sure, just when in doubt, get a little something.
That's what I think.
No, I totally agree.
I love that.
So good.
But so complicated.
So complicated.
I'm curious for our listeners and their cultures, you know, how is this different?
Maybe we'll put together a poll question.
Oh, yes.
Hmm.
Be really good.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, this was fun talking about this topic here.
And guys, I'm definitely curious to hear about your how it is in your culture.
Yep.
So in order to participate in the poll, you do need to be listening in Spotify.
So go over and check that out.
All right.
Good stuff, Michelle.
I'll see you soon.
All right.
Bye Lindsay.
Bye.
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