Santa, however do you do it?

Sophomore Mary Burgess was expecting something in return last winter when she handed a gift to someone she considered a good friend. She did not get what she expected. To her surprise, "they were like, ‘Oh, thank you,' and then they walked away," she says.

In a school so big that each student can have many branches of friends, it's easy for two acquaintances to judge the closeness of their relationship differently. The same friendship can have different meanings to both people.

So when it comes time to shop for holiday presents, not everyone is clear on who they'll be getting gifts from and who
they'll need to have gifts for.

And no one wants to be the person saying, "Wow thanks for this super-cool shirt! Here, I got you, um, this pre-sharpened pencil."
But, word on the Boulevard is many Blazers have been a part of such awkward situations. Sophomore Aime Deleon hesitates as she considers whether she has ever been on the guilty side of a one-way gift exchange. "Um," she says, glancing to her right, where a friend is raising her eyebrows mock-angrily at Deleon.

"Yeah, where's my gift?" demands the friend, as though she's asked many times before.

"Tomorrow," laughs Deleon.

Deleon is one of the lucky ones; not all stiffed gift-givers take the snub as lightly as her friend did. Senior José Hernandez certainly didn't. "I was really mad," he says, "'cause I was expecting something in return." He mutters some words under his breath, among which are "cheap" and "selfish."

Gift-giving grievances can also involve a teacher, as senior Matthew Harding explains. "There was this teacher. I thought he was cool, and I wanted to get him something so he'd remember me. And I thought maybe it'd help my grade," says Harding. "So I got him a present—it was a CD. But then he didn't get me anything, and I got a ‘C'. So I felt betrayed on both levels."
Sophomore Samira Ali takes the straightforward approach to assuring that her gifts don't go unreciprocated. "I always tell people when I'm getting them a present so they'll get me something too," she says.

Some people make baked goods to hand out to friends they didn't buy gifts for. "I've baked cookies for Christmas," says junior Madeline Fanning, "because I wanted to give something to the people that I'm friends with but who aren't close enough to spend a lot of money on."

Secret Santa is also a popular choice for students looking to save money and circumvent questions about who to shop for.
Unfortunately, it doesn't always work perfectly. Some Blazers complain that whoever drew their name did not bring in a gift for them. "We were playing Secret Santa, and I gave my person a present, but then the person who had me didn't give me anything," says freshman Trang Nguyen.

Junior Avon Jackson bases his gift-giving on whom he speaks to during the school year. "It depends on which people you talk to the most," he says. He adds that he has another criterion to help him narrow the field. "I only give girls presents," he says.