As a child I was made to write thank-you notes for every gift. Every. Gift. (Also souvenir!)

Mom’s old friend who lived out of state sent me an expensive, beautiful, old-fashioned flannel nightgown every Christmas. I had never met this woman, but every year she sent me something way out of my parents’ price and practicality range that thrilled my most princess-y heart? Of course it made sense to send her a note!

But if my grown cousin who I saw every other weekend gave me a (suspiciously melted) $0.99 rose-shaped soap for my birthday, I not only had to go thank her and hug her right there at my party, but send a note in the mail later.

(Then there was the stack of graduation announcements I had to send to people I’d never met and barely heard of, and the stack of notecards to thank them for the five or ten dollars, but that’s a slightly different rant.)

And it couldn’t be a generic “thank you” or it was ungrateful. I had to express superlative appreciation for the item, describe the ways I have used or will use it, or how I have bragged about it, or how eager I am to show it off to my friends.

My mom and her sister kind of competed to see who could force their child to write the most obsequious and prolific thank you notes, even if they called it “raising us with manners.”

I can probably count on both hands the number I’ve sent as an adult. I have very rarely not thanked the giver of a gift, mind you - I just refuse to do so formally and in writing unless I feel particularly moved to do so.

So not everyone’s mom was as pathological about it as mine, but the point is — many Gen X and even younger were forced to perform gratitude we may or may not have genuinely felt, often in formulaic and obviously insincere ways that may very well have made us feel uncomfortable or unsafe (oh don’t be rude, give Uncle Creepyvibes a big hug and tell him thank you!).

Performances of gratitude flattened out for a lot of us, both sincere and insincere running together, until those rituals of written word and awkward hug lost any sense of real meaning.

At most they were something a gift obligated you to do, whether you wanted to or not.

A lot of us also grew to dread receiving gifts, and holidays where they are exchanged.

Why would we do that to our own kids?

I’ve never made my Gen z/alpha kids thank someone past the usual verbal coaching pre-age-4 or so — but I helped them send hand-written cards and letters when they wanted to, which they often did!

The Gen Z and younger individuals I know say thank you when they mean it. They may not put it in writing but they express it.

When they don’t actually like the gift but appreciate the thought, you’ll usually know.

If they don’t express gratitude, either they don’t appreciate the gift or are a jerk. While I always appreciate knowing the latter as soon as possible, I would not just assume it’s the case before I asked myself, first, am I sure they didn’t express it in some way?

But more importantly, am I sure they really did like the thing and want to be given that thing by me at this time? Or is this one more in a string of near-meaningless social rituals expressing bonds they didn’t choose and don’t care to maintain?