On Gifts
⏲ 5-minute read | last updated 4 weeks ago
Gift-giving is an unusual opportunity to demonstrate a keen familiarity with others. The right gift feels like flexing your relationship/empathy muscles. It’s like getting a bullseye, or having code you wrote work perfectly the very first time.
The satisfaction comes from the challenge. But with gift-giving today, we face new challenges unique to modern life, which might mean the way we think about it needs updating.
A Good Gift
In my mind a good gift is special, rare, meaningful, and a surprise - with no expectation of reciprocity. By that standard, it seems increasingly challenging to gift successfully. For birthdays and holidays, two of the most common occasions, it might just be impossible. With the former, you sorta know it’s coming; with the latter, there’s sorta an expectation of reciprocity.
(I concede the literal definition of a gift is not as stringent as I have laid out here, although when it comes to surprise, I firmly believe something special is lost when you know a gift is coming).
A Bad Gifts
The worst version of gift-giving is when it’s made shallow. A forced gesture one feels to prophylactically make an offering expecting one to be returned in kind. Continuing to use my definition from above, this fails all the criteria. It may even sour an otherwise kind act, and turn gift into chore. I fear for many this may be the current state.
A Transactional Economy
There’s an old economist joke, it goes like this:
Two economists are walking in a forest when they come across a pile of shit.
The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.
Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."
"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"
Sometimes it feels like modern gift-giving has devolved into something similar; the flywheel of capitalism expanding the variety and scope of occasions for which gifting is appropriate. To not participate is to risk social stigmatization. In effect, this leaves a feeling of coerced participation.
Where once there was not, now there must be. To name a few tithes the modern times, we have: Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Independence Day, Back to School, Halloween, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year's Day (not to mention birthdays, weddings, baby showers, anniversaries, housewarmings, graduations, retirements, engagements, promotions, get-well-soons, thank yous, and condolences).
But not to worry - while simultaneously insisting we give more, modern society gives us the tools for our salvation.
- Not sure when to shop? Try Black Friday (and now Cyber Monday), or Prime Day (and Labor Day sales, Memorial Day sales, and tax-free weekends).
- Not sure what to get? Try a gift shop, boutique store, Etsy, or why not try an experience with a Groupon? Better yet, try checking the gift registry on Amazon that will ship what they have picked out directly to their house. You never even have to touch it!
- Not sure if you can afford it? You can split your purchase into four equal payments over the next few months using Afterpay, Klarna, or Affirm.
The barriers to entry have never been so low. And void of a context or relevance except for the one in which it resides (the occasion itself), the act of gift-giving seems to be a self-reinforcing one.
Getting It Right
A gift used to say one thing: I care.
But as we've become more self-aware as a society and the modern expectations of gift-giving, a gift now says one of two things: either (i) I care or (ii) I feel obligated. And it's this second point, of obligation rather than caring, that creates a few more possibilities that did not previously exist.
When you combine care (from the perspective of the gift-giver) with the meaning/relevance the gift has (from the perspective of the gift-receiver), you get four potential outcomes in the reception of a gift. We'll call this landscape of possibilities the Gifting Quadrant.
The "Gifting Quadrant"
- At one extreme, low care and low meaning/relevance, you have obligatory gifts (fairly self-explanatory).
- Symbolic gifts manage to have meaning/relevance but are cut short by a lack of care (i.e. a sort of gifting love-bomb).
- Thoughtful (but misguided) gifts do the opposite, they lack meaning/relevance, but have an abundance of care (i.e "they tried").
- And lastly, at the other extreme of high care, high meaning/relevance you have heartfelt gifts (the gold standard of gift-giving).
In this context, if the goal is to deliver a heartfelt gift, it would seem you only have a one-in-four chance of getting it right. The remainder: risks borne from well-intentioned gestures mutated by modernity.
What Even Is "An Occasion"?
If the context for a gift is that of a larger occasion, why must we wait? Why couldn't we surprise someone, say, on a Tuesday afternoon after returning from the gym (or some equally mundane time)? I can think of so many better reasons to celebrate people than the days imposed upon us by tradition.
Moreover, it would seem that an act borne of this attitude would remove any sense of obligation, leaving only the rightmost two quadrants above: thoughtful (but misguided) and heartfelt. A welcome improvement in the odds.
So why aren't we celebrating more? Ourselves, our friendships, our relationships, and our family all the other days of the year? Maybe we all should be doing more of that?
I Still Give Gifts
That's not to say I'll stop giving gifts, lest I commit social suicide. Not all gifts need to be heartfelt (not all occasions call for it); and, I get some personal satisfaction in finding people good gifts. There's a selfish component to it. I'm sure I'm not alone in this thought.
But gifting is a complex tradition, muddied further by people's (seemingly) inborn preferences for the ways they receive affection. While I don't think it's fair to call for the wholesale eradication of a tradition, I do think it's both fair and appropriate to examine what’s become of it. To consider, in the context of modern living, updating both our expectations and behaviors.
I love a good gift, but honestly, for both the giver and the receiver, it's hard to pull off (see the "Gifting Quadrant" above). For reasons outside either party's control, you may just have to be a superb gift-giver, or know the receiver intimately, to be successful.
The current state works, but it also seems stressful and perhaps in the scope of what's truly important, unnecessary. So at least for myself, consider this my unconditional release and waiver of all obligations for the conveyance of a gift during any occasion where one might be expected.
And maybe - in a true reclamation and revitalization of the tradition - consider if a waiver of a similar nature is an appropriate gift for the folks in your life. They may not thank you; they may not listen; but perhaps with enough participation, we can all eat a bit less shit.