I am a big fan of gift cards for Christmas. I like giving them and I like receiving them. It makes Christmas seem less commercial even though it is basically just giving money. It makes gift giving so much easier too. Professor Waldfoldel from Wharton wrote a paper on it which detailed the deadweight loss of gift-giving during the holiday season. Here's an excerpt:

Waldfogel wrote a paper in 1993 entitled, "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas" in which he asked participants in a study how much they valued items they received as gifts. He found that 13% of the value of what gift givers gave was destroyed through the process of choosing the wrong things. "This paper didn't have any questions about items that people had bought for themselves," says Waldfogel, adding that the paper generated a sizeable amount of controversy, with some respondents going so far as to label him a 'grinch'