Regifting: No Longer Just for the Cheap and Clueless

A lot of shopping savvy and a small amount of decorum turns regifting into recycling with a heart

The upside of a down economy is that once marginally acceptable behaviors now are not only all right, but downright laudable. Take regifting. No longer the domain of the cheap or the clueless, it has become recycling with a heart. The idea is so popular it even has a dedicated Web site: www.regiftable.com, full of ideas, tips and regifting etiquette. This year, it has even declared Thursday as National Regifting Day, based on the most popular date for office holiday parties, where a whopping 40 percent of all regifting occurs.  For the rest of us, time was, if you got a horrible gift from Aunt Tillie, all you could really do was hide it in your closet, bring it out when she visited, and get over yourself. Now that closet is full of time- …