Clutching a gardening catalog with the same reverence our children demonstrated for toy ads once upon a time, my husband declared that he had found me the perfect gift. He opened to a dog-eared page and  pointed to a shovel. To the untrained eye, it looked identical to three other shovels in our garage, despite a far more grandiose price tag. Apparently, this was the King of Spades—the kind that makes other shovels quake and hide their faces in shame.

When my eyeball-rolling stopped, I was grateful for my husband’s practicality. He made it easier to break the news that all I want for Christmas is a new “comfort-height” toilet, and, oh, by the way, perhaps we should redo the master bathroom while we’re at it.

At 36 years and counting, our marriage is well past the point of exchanging poetry, engraved picture frames, and handcrafted gifts for the holidays. How much longer before I’m shopping for a nose-hair trimmer and he’s slapping a bow on a box of compression socks? Ho, ho, ho.

We’re not unusual among long-married couples. Our friends have exchanged hubcaps, cast-iron skillets, refrigerators, hatchets, chainsaws, and machetes. Nothing screams Happy Birthday, Jesus, like a machete. They insist these gifts were requested, but I’m wary of signing a receipt for something that might wind up in an evidence locker at the police station. Maybe I’ll tell my beloved to buy his own shovel.

Read More: Long Marriages: What You Get, What You Give Up

Gifts for All Stages of Family Life

When our relationship was new, I treated my hubby to a Ray Charles concert, hiding the tickets under his plate at a special dinner. When I finished my epic trudge through graduate school, he surprised me with a trip to Hawaii. Those were the days!

Presents became more practical, though still personal, after our children arrived. Clothing, jewelry, and technology were favorites, presented with a gift receipt just in case.

Gifts with receipts can be a prelude to the next stage which is gift cards—a nice way of saying, “I’ve given up. Go buy yourself something nice and we’ll pretend I thought of it.” This style of gifting is popular among people who wish to commandeer the occasion for their own purposes, such as my friend’s husband who always buys gift certificates for his favorite restaurants.

Gifts of experience—weekend getaways, symphony tickets, and the like—are perfect for people who have everything they need as well as for retirees who never leave the house. I admit to having hijacked this type of gift for my own purpose, most recently by giving my husband tickets to see a comedian I love but he’s never heard of. Happy anniversary, Dear.

Long-time partners who have exhausted all previous options may turn to a last resort: The Complete Charade. During this stage, people buy their own gifts and give it to their partners to give back to them. The bonus here is that by this stage, the recipient is a bit older and may be legitimately surprised by what’s under all that wrapping paper.

Unwritten Rules

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Elaine temporarily rekindled their romance? For Elaine’s birthday, Jerry presented her with a rather platonic card and a stack of cash. Jerry’s well-meaning defense—“I figure you can go out and get yourself whatever you want”—went over like a lead balloon. Elaine was horrified.

“Cash? You got me cash? Who are you, my uncle?”

“Come on, that’s $182 right there. I don’t think that’s anything to sneeze at.” 

Jerry’s protestations failed to soften the blow, especially when Jerry’s goofy neighbor Kramer walked in with the gift Elaine really wanted, along with a sentimental card containing Yeats’s poetry. Elaine was over the moon, and Jerry was still flummoxed about why his gift got no respect.

Play it Safe this Holiday Season

Gift giving involves a veritable maze of unwritten conventions dictated by the nature and length of the giver-recipient relationship. Here are a few rules I’ve gleaned; I’m sure you’ll think of others.

1. No level of hopelessness justifies buying a terracotta figurine that sprouts Chia. Likewise for devices that activate lamps when someone claps.
2. Just say no to gifts hawked on infomercials (Ginsu knives, Snuggies, etc.) or anything invented by the man who gave us spray-on hair, Veg-o-matic, and pocket fisherman.
3. No single-purpose doodads such as battery-powered spaghetti twirlers or banana slicers whose function can just as easily be performed by a fork or knife, or a pot of boiling water (who needs an electric egg cooker?), or an oven (pizza baker, cupcake maker). Especially if these doodads take up precious counter space.
4. Exercise caution shopping at hardware stores or office-supply chains. I recall my daughter’s dismay when her new husband presented her with a paper shredder for her birthday. My son fell into the same trap, buying his new wife a wall calendar. Before buying house gifts, ask yourself: Have we exchanged enough poetry, heart-shaped baubles, and engraved items to be forgiven something this mundane?
5. “Boxed gift sets” and baskets of scented lotions sold within several feet of store entrances scream desperation and are rarely opened. I suspect that, like fruitcakes, there are actually only 50 of these items on Earth, and they just keep circling the globe in a great festival of re-gifting.
6. Speaking of things that scream desperation, don’t let your beloved see a receipt dated just hours before the holiday.
7. Consider the personality of the recipient before shopping the clearance rack or using a Groupon. Some recipients regard this as bottom feeding, while others hail it as a victory. When my spouse buys himself a shirt for me to give him, he unwraps it at Christmas and announces, “Two bucks! Can you believe I got this for two bucks?” Know thy consumer.
8. Gifts that might be construed as rude hints should only be given when the recipient has explicitly pleaded for them. Whole-body Spanx, gym memberships, gift cards for cosmetic surgery, and books like Fifty Ways to Fix Your Personality, well, good relationships have ended for a lot less.

Read More: Even More Painful at the Holidays: When Grown Children Don’t Get Along

A version of this story was originally published in December 2019.