Is giving of gift mandatory during Christmas?

By: Alex P. Vidal

“God never gives someone a gift they are not capable of receiving. If he gives us the gift of Christmas, it is because we all have the ability to understand and receive it.” – Pope Francis

MANY of us give gifts to promote the reputation that we are nice, generous people; and we usually do it to put pressure on the recipient to reciprocate.

For example, when we take a basket of fruit to a friend in the hospital, it is because we would like him to do the same for us, observed Roger Highfield in The Physics of Christmas.

“Gifts have the power to make or break a relationship, for they are indices of how we interpret the status, power, taste, and emotion of our peers,” he explained.

Gifts are also excellent way of atoning for sins, but they may be rejected if judged as not sufficiently compensatory, Highfield said

Adrian Furnham, a psychologist at University College, London, said gifts reveal how socially aware we are in perceiving others.

It’s not just the issue of whom we choose to give presents to or how much or how little we spend on those presents, but what sort of gifts we select, Furnham said.

And when our motives for giving a particular gift are incorrectly interpreted, our faux pas is on display for all to see.

For example, the gift of a fluorescent fluffy toy might be thought an insult by someone who perceives himself or herself so sophisticated.

“As a channel of communication (a gift) has limited capacity because the range of messages is few and the language not well known,” explained Furnham.

 

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“Perhaps the gift-phobics who discover the exchange of gifts between family and friends do so because they don’t speak the language and agree with Wittgenstein, who so wisely noted: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’”

Whitfield said psychologists have now started to decode the language of gifts in an effort to unwrap this seasonal ritual.

They have studied different gift occasions and assessed the various stages in the gift-giving process, the function of gifts, and the norms that govern who may give what to whom and why certain gifts–for instance, money–are often considered inappropriate.

Men and women behave very differently when it comes to Christmas gift-giving, added Highfield.

At the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, David Cheal had great difficulty interviewing as many men and women for one study of Christmas gift-giving.

The reason soon become clear: women remain the principal actors in gift transactions.

The annual hunt for that ideal present is overwhelmingly seen as women’s work. Indeed, among couples, it is usually the women who maintain the gift economy.

Men tend to give more valuable gifts, less often. Part of the reason is that men generally earn more than women.

But women have been said to dominate Christmas giving perhaps because it is seen as a family festival and women are the “kin keepers,” taking more responsibility for maintaining family and social ties.

 

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One of Cheal’s respondents explained that her reason for giving is “to be a message. You have interest in that person, whatever the message is at the moment.”

Highfield stressed that other studies have shown that we are little different from the Hazda in that gift-giving often puts the recipient under an obligation, exploiting a reciprocal instinct that places the act closer to pure barter.

Much of Christmas giving actually reveals a more calculated character, following certain rules and obeying certain taboos.

Carole Burgoyne and Stephen Lea of the University of Exter, England said: “To violate these rules, to give too little, or indeed to give too much, can be insulting.”

One traditional taboo is the gift of money, according to Highfield.

If we hand out checks and cash, he explained, “the materialist underbelly of Christmas is laid bare for all to see. As a result, money is not a universally acceptable medium of exchange.”

Gifts of money also imply a lack of effort and insight on the part of the giver, according to a study of 92 students conducted by Burgoyne and David Routh of Bristol University in England.

Another study by Lea showed that this was particularly so when money was given by a child to a parent, but not when it was a gift from a grandparent or parent to a child.

Highfield stressed that today’s psychologists see gifts as a way of initiating and maintaining relationships–just as we observed in the case of Henry III.

According to Bourgoyne, Christmas tends to differ from other giving rituals, such as birthdays, because it is more likely to involve a simultaneous exchange.

In relationships where reciprocity is expected, there can be serious consequences of the failure to give a gift.

These are more likely to occur in closer relationships, such as between siblings, parents and children, or girlfriend and boyfriend.

“The nonappearance of a gift is likely to lead to broken relationships and family row unless there is a very good explanation for it,” Burgoyne wrote.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)