It’s that holly, jolly time of year again when people are expected to buy presents for their loved ones. ABC News reports that the average American will spend $700 on holiday gifts.
And with that news always comes the warning that gift giving can be expensive if you don’t approach it with a budget, followed by the usual spate of well-meaning articles suggesting that people stop giving gifts for Christmas altogether.
“Here’s Why You Should Stop Buying Christmas Presents” blares the website MoneyWise (spoiler: because it is cheaper not to.) In 2017, The Washington Post declared, “ ‘Our kids were just so ungrateful’: Why some families are boycotting presents this year,” prompting Facebook comments like, “I’m not buying anything for anyone this year. I’m tired of how ungrateful people are. It’s time to pay off some bills and buy myself something nice.”
Paying off bills and buying yourself something nice seems to be a common desire … well, any time of the year, really, but also around Christmas. A Quicken survey of 1,000 married couples found that a third of them spend more on themselves than on their spouse during the holiday season (and 20 percent forgot to buy their spouse a gift at all).
USA Today ran a piece called “Why You Shouldn’t Give Gifts to Adults” explaining that “Eschewing gift-giving doesn’t make you a Grinch, some say — it might make you more of a savvy Santa.”
Ah, yes. That famous kind of Santa who has nothing in his pouch and stays home on Christmas Eve watching Netflix.
The writers of these articles always seem to think that abstaining from giving to others is a novel idea, and not one that occurred to Ebenezer Scrooge way back in 1843. Anyone who thought the ritual of gift giving was a product of modern commercialism might be interested to learn that it dates back, at the very least, to the court of Henry VIII in the 1500s, if not to Jesus Christ himself.
The purpose of gift giving isn’t about making others feel sufficiently grateful to you. I imagine the baby Jesus expressed only modest, gurgling pleasure in response to the myrrh. Even so, the Three Wise Men symbolize the joy of giving to others and making them feel welcomed and loved.
I don’t really understand the reason for not giving gifts. It basically always comes down to not wanting to be inconvenienced and caring more about your happiness than anyone else’s.
I don’t really understand the reason for not giving gifts. It basically always comes down to not wanting to be inconvenienced and caring more about your happiness than anyone else’s.
A man once solemnly told me that he would not be getting his significant other a gift because, “When I care about people, I’d rather show them by actions like maybe making dinner.” I told him that I make my husband dinner almost every night. Nice actions are generally such a given in relationships that they won’t stand out unless you are the kind of narcissist who never, ever does them until an annual occasion demands it and it saves you a trip to the mall.
That doesn’t mean you need to spend $700 in the process. For goodness’ sake, talk to people you’re giving gifts to. Explain that your finances might be tight, and ask them if they can think of anything they’d really like in a certain price range. If you don’t know people well enough to do that, you don’t know them well enough to buy gifts for them.
Set a spending limit. If it’s low, you can easily get every member of your family a used book related to their unique interests for a few dollars each, as is a popular custom in Iceland. You can make something. You can bake treats to give people. You can write everyone a long letter about how special they are to you and how many wonderful qualities they have, put it in a box and tie it with a bow (you will have to buy the ribbon for the bow). You can buy socks, a gift that everyone uses 100 percent of the time. If your beloved’s tastes are minimalist, donate to their favorite charity. The charity will send you a certificate saying you’ve done so, which you can give to them.
Or buy them, as many people prefer, an experience you know they’d enjoy. You can certainly offer an act of service — but please spare me the “I took the garbage out. Wasn’t that enough?” nonsense.
Because the point of the season, if there is one at all in secular America, is to think about how to make other people happy. It is quite literally a season of giving. If that seems inconvenient, well, yeah, that’s why it’s only one day out of the year.
Now go figure out a nice gift for your mom.
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