For those who are not completely fluent in Seinfeld, there is… actually, first things first: we can never be friends. But second, there is an episode — Season Six, Episode 12, if I remember rightly, which I do — called ‘The Label Maker’, which contains (according to the Oxford English Dictionary no less) the first known use of the phrase ‘regifter’ (you can watch it in the clip above).
You know how people blather on and on about all the expressions we would not have were it not for Shakespeare? I think it’s high time we started blathering on and on about Seinfeld in the same way, so many are the modern idioms that have originated from the greatest TV show of all time.
And yes, I know if I say ‘high time’, that I am quoting Shakespeare. ‘I am aware!’ to quote George from Seinfeld.
This particular episode always comes to my mind at this time of year — ie present buying season — because invariably at some point someone will mention ‘regifting’ in some way. And always — as in ‘The Label Maker’, which has a plot centering on the regifting of the title item between members of the cast — in a negative context. Regifting, it would seem, remains a social faux pas on a par with not getting up for a pregnant person on the Tube, asking for a tip to be taken off the bill in a restaurant or smoking in a…. well, just smoking full stop these days.
But honestly: why?
In an era when we expend so much energy putting the correct bit of Pret A Manger refuse in the correct bin and washing out baked bean cans for recycling and constantly telling our mums and dads not to be angry with Just Stop Oil because they’ve really got a point and are actually fighting for all of us, choosing to not panic-buy last-minute crap that nobody could ever want should be the norm. But it is not. Not naming names, but there are entire retail chain business models based on this indisputable truth. And a side-effect of this is that we all have houses laden with stuff that our nearest and dearest have at some point bought us that we don’t really want any more than they really want the stuff that we bought them.
The obvious solution is that we need to decriminalise the act of regifting, or even make a virtue of regifting. We should in fact have stickers to put on presents reading ‘proudly regifted’. The Government should have some kind of ‘eat out to help out’ campaign, encouraging us to forage through the darkest depths of our attics to uncover long-lost treasures that could instead take pride of place on, if not our sisters’, then at least our Chief Content Officers’ mantelpieces. I’m telling you, Rishi and Keir: it’s a ratings winner for so many reasons.
Even now just typing this I am making the connection in my mind between something that I know I have in my house somewhere and the impossible-to-buy-for friend on whose behalf I will otherwise be tearing around Selfridges come Christmas Eve. Also: I still have all the Seinfeld seasons on DVD somewhere. So anyone out there who doesn’t have Netflix and would like their world rocked, feel free to get in touch.
