When a friend or family member’s birthday is coming up, how do you feel about presenting them with the gift? While the ads on TV will have you believe that everyone beams with joy upon a receiving a gift, nay, it isn’t so.

Why? There are some planetary signs, houses and aspects that will make some people grunt their thanks (at best!) while others light up like a Christmas tree when they receive something.

Everyone knows the type of gift recipient who will attempt to smile and nod when they receive something (and that’s their best efforts at enthusiasm). These ingrates are often shy about openly expressing their appreciation, and just can’t seem to get worked up with the thrill that makes it feel worthwhile making an effort to give them a gift.

Many of them are “cursed” with a Moon and/or Mercury conjunct/square/oppose Saturn aspect. Any of these combinations makes them awfully self-conscious, pessimistic, and disbelieving of their worthiness. If you get them a good present, they feel embarrassed, obligated, or even suspicious of your motives, ie “what do you really want from me?”. If you get them a (quite honestly) bad gift, they feel that they don’t deserve any better and will then moan no-one cares. Yes, it’s not too fun giving them something.

Others tough gift nuts to crack are those with Saturn in the second house. Saturn rules what makes you feel uncomfortable, insecure, unworthy, shy – you get the drift – and the second house rules money, values, possessions and other material goodies. If you don’t buy them a super-good, thoughtful present that’s the best you can afford, they feel you don’t care. These guys are quite often the type to judge their relationship with you by the quality of the gifts you give.

A related gift-giver is one with a heavy Virgo or Capricorn focus in their chart (and Taurus to a lesser degree). They can be surprisingly mean and have no compunction about re-gifting, or just giving you a “token” present eg a jar of jam, a small book etc – even for a milestone birthday. They just don’t like spending money. The gifts they prefer to give tend to be actual services ie they will happily help you move, repair something or offer advice that you’d normally pay for.

Geminis, Sagittarians and Aquarians can often get a kick out of giving someone a gift that strays dangerously close to being wildly inappropriate, just to get a rise out of them. These are the whoopee cushions and other silly gags (especially appealing to Sagittarians), books that send a message ie How to Win Friends and Influence People (Geminis are most guilty of this) and those are so left-field no-one can believe they bought them – take a bow, Aquarius.

Those with a heavy Aries, Mars or first house focus in their charts are hopeless at thinking about others. And you won’t be in any doubt how they feel about your prezzie! They either love it and start using it/playing it straightaway (at which point you heave a sigh of relief) or will say, “No, there’s a much newer/better/trendier/cooler X that I want” or something charmingly similar, making you furious you bothered. If they haven’t abdicated their gift-buying responsibilities to someone else, they tend to buy exactly what THEY like as that is what interests them. So ask these guys to give you a gift card to a store you like. You get what you want, it takes them mere seconds if they do it online with an electronic gift certificate AND you can let them know what you bought thanks to them. This’ll then encourage them to do it again as they love praise…

Next post – who’s great at receiving gifts…

Read the monthly stars for Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces.