The perfect gift

In today's Miss Manners column I think she mostly misses the point of the question, probably because she wants to address what she feels is a problem: gift lists.

Miss Manners says "Far from spreading pleasure, [they] brings out the worst in most people -- increasingly blatant greed and the resentment that you encountered", but frankly, the letter writer said nothing about not wanting to use other people's lists, or refusing to and thus incurring anger, or even about getting them at all. It's entirely about not wanting to give people a list of what she wants so as to force them to go shopping for her and pick "the perfect gift".

Someone who says "My relatives are angry with me for not distributing a list of what I want them to give me for Christmas!" and follows that by faux-understanding "that picking the perfect gift is not a challenge relished by everyone" (implying that the gifts she picks are always perfect and cherished), and then finishes by saying, "Any attempt to discuss this issue always results in hurt feelings and an insistence that I'm 'hard to buy for.' " is someone who always sighs when she unwraps the latest not-so-perfect gift and puts on her martyred face, possibly even actually noting out loud that, alas, it seems she's not worth the trouble...

In short, this person's relatives don't get "angry" because they want her to place orders, but because they're tired of guessing wrong and being made to feel less than perfect.