What happen to the good old days?

Call me old fashion, but every Sunday I bake cookies or brownies for all my friends on my floor. It's a simple gift and I don't ask for anything in return. I do it as just something simply nice after a sometimes very long weekend.  I was raised with the notion that I should always give back, my mother had me volunteering at the high school she worked at by the age of 8. I worked with high school students until I was in junior high and then joined my own student organized volunteer program. Now I just like doing simple stuff for my friends that don't mean or ask for anything in return. 

But I know everything is not puppies and rainbows. I see the pressure for people to give and give back and I have felt it to. I hate valentines days and christmas. Two of the lamest holidays ever, now don't get me wrong there are some parts of each holiday I can stand. But now there is all this pressure to get what you really want and give and spend money no one really has, for things no one really needs. 

I have this friend who is very rich, I mean like money that I will never see in my life time rich. And just because she knows I'm no where near her level she pays for a lot of stuff for us to do and her parents take us out to dinner all the time at really (Really) nice places. But its hard because I can never really gift them back because it looks so pathetic to them.  So instead I try and be the most supportive and understanding friend I can be.  That really the only gift I can give her. Gifts....can't give them, can't not give them.......