Relationships: White Elephants & Secret Santas

On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. (Matt 2:11 NIV)

Why Exchanging Gifts Strengthen

Social Ties

"Christmas is undoubtedly a festival of consumption, but it is equally a festival of reunion, of restating and renewing ties of kinship and friendship. O. Henry’s
"The Gift of the Magi" is the classic case. In this story, two impoverished lovers sacrifice their dearest possessions to buy gifts for each other. The man sells his watch to buy a set of combs for his wife’s lovely hair, and she cuts off her hair and sells it to buy a fob for her husband’s cherished watch. This is a metaphor for the general truth: People very often buy things not because they are materialistic but because they are social. What is unusual about contemporary American society is that we so often express our attachments through newly purchased, newly manufactured gifts, rather than ritually recycled or handcrafted ones.

Giving gifts is a basic human way of establishing and strengthening social relationships. French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss tells how, in inexpensive restaurants in the south of France, two strangers often share a small table for lunch. They eat their food separately but treat the carafe of wine set at each plate very differently. One person lifts his or her own carafe and pours the wine into the other’s glass. The neighbor then reciprocates.

Christmas is undoubtedly a festival of consumption, but it is equally a festival of reunion, of restating and renewing ties of kinship and friendship.

Why? In a sense, nothing has happened. Two identical items have been exchanged and consumed. But as Levi-Strauss observes, 'there is much more in the exchange itself than in the things exchanged.' The gift-giving sets in motion a set of mutual obligations for cordiality and conversation. For the course of a lunch hour, gift-giving has established a social relationship. It does so in all human societies under all sorts of circumstances…

We know from research as well as everyday observation that people cherish the things they receive as gifts… [Sociologist] Eugene Rochberg-Halton found that certain kinds of cherished goods were particularly likely to have been gifts. Forty-eight percent of the pieces of jewelry mentioned [in his study of middle-class and working-class Chicagoans] were acquired as gifts, and another 19 percent were inherited. So were 40 and 33 percent of the clocks, 44 and 33 percent of the glassware and 47 and 29 percent of the silverware… 65 percent of the houseplants mentioned had come as gifts, often as cuttings from friends’ plants—friendship symbolized through a bond of living matter. Gifts come to embody and personify the spirit of the giver.

We know from research as well as everyday observation that people cherish the things they receive as gifts… Gifts come to embody and personify the spirit of the giver.

We consider some objects more suitable as gifts than others. Since it is often more important that a gift be meaningful than that it be useful, many of the most 'useless' or luxurious things that people buy are presented as gifts.

It’s no coincidence that the most obviously useful gift of all—money—is widely regarded as a vulgar or thoughtless gift. It becomes more acceptable if it is less negotiable or disguised in some way—as a savings bond or a silver dollar, say, rather than cash or a check. Or if a check is given, it is more acceptable as part of a ritual. For several generations in my family, for example, annual birthday checks from grandfather and father have been adjusted each year to the age of the growing child...

Since women are the unpaid social directors of American society, they are also its chief gift-givers. Even affluent women exchange clothes for special occasions more than men do, exchange recipes, take responsibility for handing down of children’s clothes and toys and remember to give birthday and anniversary cards and gifts… women do most of the work involved in Christmas gift-giving: They decorate, they wrap, they purchase most of the gifts they give jointly with their husband and they give more gifts in their own name than men do.

The commercialization of Christmas is a sign that people are choosing to express their social natures and generous natures through material goods, which are both convenient to buy and often relatively permanent as a social bond.

We may rail at the commercialization of Christmas, but commercialization is not proof that Americans have lost their spirituality… What distinguishes an affluent society is not that people are grasping, but that, grasping or giving they reach for material goods to express themselves. This is not, in itself, evidence of selfishness or shallowness. Just as every bought object is a convenience good, compared to something homemade, so every giving of things rather than sharing of time is a convenience. The commercialization of Christmas is a sign that people are choosing to express their social natures and generous natures through material goods, which are both convenient to buy and often relatively permanent as a social bond.

In a society in which, increasingly, both parents work outside the home, this type of 'materialism' is likely to increase as people choose to save time rather than money. This may raise questions about how we organize our lives and time, but it does not impugn the moral worth of individuals. What does raise moral questions, I believe, is our national failure to encourage people to enlarge their views of their own social worlds and to share their good fortune, throughout the year, with many others who have so little."

This excerpt has been quoted from "The Giving of Gifts" by Michael Schudson and published in Psychology Today.

Do you agree with this author's
point-of-view?

Bonus—GodTube Video Clip: Angel Tree Ministry

This video reveals how significant gift-delivery is to the families of prisoners at Christmas. Perhaps you would consider getting involved in this vital ministry.

Join the Carnival of Christian Women on Dec. 17, 2007 at Dandelions and Daydreams. Submissions are due by Dec. 14.

Photos: elifayse, mharrsch (Flickr), amazon.com

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