This festive season, I’ve experienced a heightened awareness of the secret purpose that hovers behind the gift receipt’s ostensible one. Designed to allow people to exchange gifts without revealing their value, a spate of recent conversations suggest that the true raison d’etre of the gift receipt is to shield the gift-giver from the dark suspicion of ‘regifting.’

An astonishing number of people suspect themselves to have been the target of regifting. Some suspicions seem justified. Admittedly, the health-conscious teetotaler colleague who received a set of crystal whiskey glasses is probably onto something.

But I can’t help wondering whether others may be wrong. The friend who received an “advanced reusable water bottle” worth €660 by Dior is fairly convinced that it was not chosen for her. As it happens, it came from a relative who amasses a lot of expensive and somewhat random stuff through work. She doesn’t mind that it was passed on, she just wishes it hadn’t been passed off as a gift – and she’s mildly confused about how a water bottle could be that “advanced”.

I’m haunted by the possibility that her relative really did think she’d cherish it. Newly sensitive to the risk of perceived recycling, I’m reevaluating the Steamery de-pilling gadget I bestowed on my sister and several friends a few years ago. I truly thought it was a delightful and useful item they might not buy for themselves. Based on the reactions, they wouldn’t have, but perhaps not for the reasons I thought. In hindsight, they probably each thought I’d been given one myself and didn’t want it. A misunderstanding of Shakespearean proportions if so, because in fact it was the intense satisfaction I derived from restoring my own cashmere to its silky best that led me to purchase it for my friends.

I should have been alive to this risk, having worked in the fashion industry. If your job involves freebies or discounts, it’s hard to give anything to anyone without wondering whether they’re wondering if you paid for it. Magazine jobs, in particular, place you in the tricky position of being exposed to other people’s good taste, not to mention the mechanics of taste-making, while also being aware that your friends and family have busy lives that don’t revolve around luxury goods. They may not know that a certain Diptyque candle or Hermès lipstick has been anointed the gift of the season. They may think that you just had 20 lying around, or that you bought them in bulk at a sample sale.

When it comes to gifting, there is virtually no upside to eschewing the gift receipt, but nonetheless, there are legitimate reasons you may decide to do so.

A) You may be convinced that you’ve chosen the perfect gift. Unfortunately, you are likely to be wrong. Research shows that people overwhelmingly prefer to receive something they’ve asked for, rather than receive a surprise. Gifting is hard, as we should know from our own experiences receiving. We may wish to be presented with something specific that we’ve coveted, while also yearning to be surprised with a sliver of magic. When it comes to what we want, we are complex and inconsistent. Annoyingly, so are other people.

B) You may have bought the gift months previously, possibly somewhere the recipient is unlikely to be. This is high risk, high reward. A find from a Parisian flea market that transports someone and matches their style is without doubt a killer gift. But a collision of circumstance and inspiration that sparks the perfect gift is rare. Seize it when it comes, but don’t hold yourself to its standard every year – and don’t be offended if you do get it wrong.

C) You may want to have something monogrammed. Naturally, a gift receipt is out of the question if you’ve had someone’s initials embossed onto the gift. This is another sensitive area for me because I’m a big fan of engraving. It occurs to me now that this may be arrogant as well as thoughtful. My husband mentions in passing that he does, in fact, receive comments about how many of his possessions are monogrammed. A series of thoughtful gifts from me may have had the unintended consequence of making him appear either narcissistic, or incredibly anxious about having his things stolen.

D) The gift may be an experience. One of the best presents I’ve ever received was a ticket to Hamilton on Broadway, for reasons both obvious and unexpected. Relatively soon after it opened, we spent Christmas in New York, where my parents were temporarily based. For weeks before we arrived, they queued for hours to get tickets, navigating the complicated release and returns schedule that the whole of New York was obsessed with at the time. They managed to secure tickets for our whole party, but to attend as a group would have been entirely impossible. So, I went by myself on the 22nd of December, my parents meeting me in a taxi afterwards to provide an outlet for my exhilaration. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but I was as awed as the rest of the universe.

When my husband flew in later that night, I kept the fact that he’d be attending the next day a secret from him. We hadn’t anticipated that he’d arrive last minute to the theatre straight from New York Presbyterian Hospital, where we’d rushed that morning in a desperate attempt to preserve an ill-fated pregnancy. In January, I attempted to put that ordeal behind me and returned to work and my normal routine in London. Instead, I found myself in the painful and protracted process of having an ectopic pregnancy monitored to its empty conclusion. I was briefly admitted twice, but for most of the month I had to present myself at Guy’s & St Thomas’s hospital every second or third day. I listened to the Hamilton soundtrack every time I set out on my strange new commute, and the famous rhythms and rhymes excited and distracted me successfully each time. Without fail, it evoked the feeling of New York, and of being in the theatre that night alone, unaware of the thrill that would ensue when the curtain went up and equally oblivious to what would happen afterwards. The most vivid moments in life are not always easy, but they’re not ones you’d want to exchange.

Proof of purchase is not the only reason that people swear by the gift receipt. Many people genuinely, and admirably, detest waste. The circular and sharing economies are surging, with the climate and cost of living crises urgently underlining why stewardship, collective use and repair are values worth embracing.

But a paradox inherent in the idea of giving people agency over their gift appears to relate to the gifting of vouchers. “I’d rather not do it at all if we descend to the level of vouchers,” says one friend firmly. “We may as well sit round the tree and transfer each other cash.”

I confess to having put Brown Thomas vouchers on my own Secret Santa list, mainly because I genuinely love shopping there, but for a few other reasons too. One is that the welcome shift towards shunning fast fashion and investing in pieces that last, dovetails conveniently with my tendency to like very expensive things. Many of the items I covet belong nowhere near a Secret Santa wish list. Amassing vouchers is the equivalent of saving up. Then there are items that, while within budget, could still expose me to judgement. “She spends that much on a pair of tights?!” Is a sentiment I don’t necessarily want trickling into the atmosphere of Christmas gatherings with my family or in-laws. And then there’s the humane desire to avoid landing a dad, brother, father-in-law or new partner of a relative in a Father Ted-style imbroglio by including something you may actually need on your list, like pyjamas or socks. Operating within these constraints, a voucher can seem to make sense. In fact, though, you may as well pick something, as the person is very likely to include a gift receipt anyway.

There is one exception to all this and that, of course, is children. For her fourth birthday, my daughter received a toy dictaphone from her godparents, inspired by the hours of fun she’s had playing with her godfather’s work tool. This is a source of unfathomable joy and excitement, yet that’s a very specific gift – not one that any four-year-old would love. That’s what makes it so special. It seems harder to achieve this level of specificity with adults. Maybe children are easier to know. Maybe they’re more in tune with their passions, or perhaps those passions evolve more. Perhaps it’s that monetary value doesn’t impinge on a child’s impression of a gift – they may be overjoyed by something that cost five euro, whereas an adult’s experience of a gift may be marred by the intrusion of the thought that they could have got something they liked more for the same amount. For an adult, there’s always a world of possible alternatives. For a child, there is only the gift. In this sense, it’s quite a Buddhist approach. The lesson then is that we can try to cultivate a Buddhist mindset and have gratitude for whatever we receive. Or we can do what everybody actually wants and include a gift receipt.