Christmas and Relationships

While sitting at dinner on Sunday evening, my sister, husband and I were perusing the newspaper. Not a typical occurence, but I like to flip through and see if there are good recipes or sales. This past Sunday's paper boasted that they knew what gifts to get your "sweetie". Always up for unique ideas, we started reading. They had 12 ideas, none of them all to unique: watch, cashmere sweater, bracelets, cufflinks, books, blah, blah. In addition to this, there was an article that caught our eye, entitled "Holiday Gift Guide: You like her, she likes you, and that gift better be good". Read here.
Now, what caught my attention, other than it being rather poorly written, was the sheer ridiculousness of it. While I realize that it might be tricky to navigate the waters of what to get your significant other, especially in the beginning phases of the relationship... but I have always been of the opinion that gifts a) come from the heart; b) convey that the other person is treasured; c) are not given to entice a gift in return.
To sum up the article, I feel this line is a true zinger: "I had a really hard time thinking about gift ideas for him. That's when I kind of had to start brainstorming and listening to what he was saying." So, only at Christmas is it important to listen to the man you are dating or married to? Otherwise he is merely around for convenience? The article gets much worse. One man is interviewed, gives his name and confesses that he is casually dating two women, and is not sure if he will get gifts, but might just keep " 'a neutral emergency gift' on hand in case one of them gifts him and he needs to reciprocate." Really? He wrote this in the paper? I am guessing that he is currently not dating anyone and won't need to worry about that "emergency" gift; as I am guessing those women read the article.
As I sat in disbelief as I continued to read, it started to hit me, no wonder our culture is plagued with divorce, affairs, etc. Think about it, if one cannot manage to give a Christmas gift (or birthday gift for that matter) sincerely and honestly, how can one manage to give themself sincerely and honestly? Something to think about and consider...