Dear Miss Manners,
Last year we received a nice (and expensive) bottle of wine from friends at a dinner we hosted. It was accompanied by a card in which was written "To be shared with friends." We did not open it at that particular occasion and in fact opened and drank it some six months later with family. We were later asked by the gift-giver whether we had opened it. They also made a point of telling us just how much it cost. They were obviously offended that we had not shared it with them and will no longer speak to us.
I thought that we were under no obligation to open and drink it with them or indeed wait until another occasion to share it with them -- that it was to be enjoyed at our leisure. Did we show poor form in this instance? Should we have invited them around to share it? Is it bad etiquette to tell someone how much a gift cost?
Gentle Reader,
Your friends have a strange definition of a present. But then, they have an even stranger definition of a friendship.
Of course it is rude to hand something over, bragging about how expensive it was and demanding some of it back. But Miss Manners considers that they have kindly relieved you of your etiquette problem of how to deal with such rudeness by cutting off the relationship. Otherwise she might have suggested your doing so by buying another such bottle and sending it to them without comment.
Judith Martin's latest book is No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice. She is also the author of Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (Freshly Updated). She and her husband, a scientist and playwright, live in Washington, D.C. They have two perfect children, of course.
