Wedding Gift Registries Are For Losers, But For More John Flory replies. My response follows.

I am base two, baby, George Boole can't mess with me, and not just because he's long dead. Sorry to the readership for the "Fisking style" of my reply, but it's more convenient to reply in this way. Italicized comments are John Flory's.

It's a pity, since blogwar has been declared, I gather.

Eh. It's more like a blogument, or a bloguibble. Oh wait-binary, it's all binary. War! I mean, you're the Rosie, and I'm the Tom Selleck! Granted, I am more the size of Rosie, but I don't want to be Rosie. So, we don't just disagree, you are Evil and I am Good. You are Falsity and I am Truth! BTW, we are all in BIG TROUBLE if I am actually Truth.

I will get around to answering because it's an interesting question and one that leads naturally to the discussion of the purpose of etiquette itself, apart from the specific forms it takes. But for now I have to limit myself to a couple of points. While I do argue that gift registries are not traditional, it is for the more or less obvious reason that they aren't.

Sure, I conceded that point, granted in a sarcastic way here, but in a less sarcastic way, over and over, in another venue.

It's not a judgment against them, they're just new. Of course people can have differing senses of how new a custom can be and still be worth calling traditional; Santa (as he is now) is somewhere around a century old. Giving diamond engagement rings, as a widespread custom, is about sixty years old. And gift registries are even newer.

Well, you were unclear on this point previously. It sounded very much like a straight "no tradition=bad", at least as far as wedding gift registries were concerned.

[snip points about Santa and wedding rings, as I agree.]

I haven't been able to find anything about the history of registries, but Judith Martin in 1980 called it a "business gimmick," which suggests novelty to me. At any rate I know that I have read tired jokes about duplicate or useless wedding gifts in stories from the mid-century. As far as I know, gift registries started with the stodgier variety of department store and originally focused on china and silver. The current practice is quite different even from that, obviously. If anyone comes up with a more extensive history, I'd be happy to read it. In any case, I really can't be at all apologetic about refusing to call traditional something that was called a business gimmick during my lifetime. But to repeat, not being traditional says nothing about whether it is a good practice or bad.

OK. I'm glad you cleared up your POV on tradition. I think, even though it's a "business gimmick", it is a useful one to wedding-goers, and the bride and groom, but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point. I don't care that they are a "novelty". I also think that one derisive comment by Judith Martin is hardly a conclusive condemnation.

The second thing, before I absolutely have to get back to my paper, is that class has nothing to do with it.

I figured it didn't, but it was hard to tell upon what basis that registries were evil, other than their newness. The "shopping off a menu" remark can be construed as class-centric, in the ways I delineated. But the point is withdrawn, or at least deferred.

Now that I think about it, I figure the whole practice is middle-class from start to finish, but in fact I hadn't thought about its class origins until D.G. complained in advance about my snobbery. I certainly don't care. The whole business about "toothless, gawking, bovine yokels" is not just satirical on his part but wholly made up and I honestly can't think why.

See below.

Well, one more thing. D.G. is badly mistaken about the importance I attach to this; I think he mistook the intensity of my dislike for calling novelties traditional, for my much lesser dislike of gift registries.

Well, I conceded the point about gift registries not being traditional, about five or six times, and you persisted in arguing the second point. While you mentioned in passing that you were not going to argue about this point, it did not stop you from arguing about it with me, ad nauseam infinitum.

This is baffling since I repeatedly told him that, because it would annoy people, I wasn't going to argue against using one, but I gather from his comments that he took the whole exchange as a class-based criticism of him.

I took it as a criticism of my wife and me, regardless of why. You never once stopped to think that I might find it a bit insulting both to me and my wife that we registered, and thought it was useful to do so. And I do think you're being snobbish, it's just that the snobbery is intellectual rather than class-based. It's more that I think you are assaulting us on the grounds of bad taste, and mindlessly following a trend, neither of which has much to do with class. Springer is an example of bad taste and stupidity.

This is also odd, since if anything he could boast of being actually capitalist through the side of the family that owns an honest to God means of production (a factory), whereas my family is at best a running dog of capitalists. But good grief, who cares.

The claim that I mistake the importance you attach to this is altogether your fault, IMHO. When you decide to argue something, you argue every point with ferocity. That doesn't mean that you are angry or mean or anything, just that you will argue any point until your opponent capitulates or it can't be argued anymore (because Time has ended and the Universe has collapsed, for example). I recognize this trait in you, as it has been attributed to/observed in me. And I don't think I'm "projecting". In almost all cases I take this as a compliment, in that you think I'm worthy to argue with. If you don't think someone is worthy, you stay silent (and I have really come to respect your opinion of who to engage and who not bother to). Though your style is casual, it is also evident that you want to win the argument. Who cares? You do.

I'll explain later why I think gift registries are not a good custom, but it really is nothing fancier than that they seem to me to diminish the real value of giving gifts. And yes, they do also seem like buying off a menu.

You're not obligated to buy from the registry. So don't buy from it, and give the gift you want to the marrying couple. Or give them money. Brides and grooms like money, too. After watching "Goodfellas", I wished my wife and I could've had a Mob wedding. We would've danced while everyone gave us thick envelopes of cash. Now that's how you start a life together.  ¶ 21:13