It's the thought that counts

There is an assumption that gifts are bundles of pleasure. But that’s not always the case. 

There is the landfill, runaway consumerism, and overspending. There is the weight of expectation and obligation. A gift is a bit of a roll of the dice. You don’t always get what you want. As a giver or as a receiver. 

This year, when pretty much every ritual has been upended, we get to reconsider ritual itself. 2020’s rude awakenings, and even its disappointments, are an opportunity to reassess the rituals we’ve inherited. Are they working, or not? And if they aren’t working,  how will we replace or modify them? Perhaps our cultural practices of holiday gifting could benefit from a little attention.

Pioneering sociologist Marcel Mauss writes in his 1925 book, The Gift, that gifts are social glue. They are the ties that bind through perpetual giving and receiving. We give gifts to incur a debt, ensuring a connection for the future. In giving gifts, we bind ourselves to each other. 

We learn the rules of gifting from one another, Mauss writes. But, like most cultural norms, these rules are rarely spoken out loud. I have taught my children what I was taught: to say an enthusiastic thank you no matter what; to give gifts on special occasions; that a gift should contain some element of surprise. But, the more I research pleasure, the more I wonder about etiquette that favors forced enthusiasm over radical honesty and duty over desire. Is it possible that we are leaving pleasure on the table when we conspire in these unexamined conventions? 

Last week was our daughter Adi’s 15th birthday. After blowing out her candles, she began to unwrap her gift. “I’m worried,” she said. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but, what if I don’t like it?” 

As soon as she spoke, I knew I had missed the mark. I had rushed it. The deadline of her birthday, the weight of the expectations felt more like obligation than pleasure. At the last minute, I chose something that was more about my interests than hers, a Tarot deck for what I hoped would be a burgeoning interest in the esoteric. 

“I challenge you to express exactly how you feel about this gift,” I told her as she looked hesitatingly at the box. “We can handle it.” I wanted to give her a freedom we rarely give ourselves, permission to be totally honest about the experience of receiving a gift.

Disappointment can feel like a referendum on our love, especially for parents. Our economy is poised to take full advantage of this. In Born to Buy, journalist Juliet Schor found that the more parents work outside of the home, the more we purchase “guilt” gifts. American children are trained to exploit this, too, with thousands of hours of marketing aimed directly at them.

As Adi extracted the gift from its box, I could see her debating what to reveal. “Um...” she said after a long pause, “it’s not really my thing.” And then pretended a tear wasn’t rolling down her cheek. 

A triple-win gift is when the receiver both needs and desires it but is not expecting it. This trifecta is a self-reinforcing loop of pleasure where the giver gets as much, if not more, pleasure than the receiver. 

In this case, I had accomplished a triple loss. We all felt worse off for it. 

It prompted us at TPR to look at gifting through the prism of the pleasure principles. Here’s what we found:

Pleasure does not like to be rushed.
Economists talk about budgeting for holiday gift giving in terms of money. But it’s time that is often our scarcest asset. Which means that whether it’s buying or making or deciding, there are ways to delegate what time we do have in order to gift thoughtfully.

A gift is an opportunity to bring more attention to a relationship.
What if our gift giving guides didn’t offer a selection of beer making kits or hair accessories but questions like: What is the nature of your relationship? What do you really want to express? What do you notice about the receiver? 

Approval
I can be judgemental about my teenagers’ devotion to their phones and what feels like unchecked consumerism. But as soon as I decided to be in full approval of them, we sat on the couch and spent a very pleasurable evening online shopping. Without buying anything. 

Create space for an honest response.
Etiquette and our desire to please dictate that we say something gracious, like thank you for thinking of me. But why is that? Why is re-gifting something we do secretly, with guilt? Is it possible that feigning delight gives us short term gain but diminishes pleasure across our culture and over time? We can set ourselves up for an honest response by saying, “I’d like to get you something to show my love but please guide me.” This creates an opening for more connection. Questions like “How did I do?” “Do you like it?” “What can I do differently next time?” show an investment going forward.

Gifts - the physical objects, anyway - are not everyone’s jam.
In The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, he writes that some of us respond more to acts of service, words of affirmation, touch and quality time together. We tend to give in the language we want to receive. This quiz is a fun place to start. 

Presentation is everything
A study at Harvard found that even generous bonuses, when left on desks without a note, brought little satisfaction. The gift object itself can be less relevant than a lovingly tied bow, a handwritten note, a personal flair.

A gracious “thank you” is its own gift.
Although we aren’t supposed to expect anything in exchange for a gift, there is a value in reciprocity, in maintaining social connections no matter what, a value that is argued in Mauss’s The Gift and lauded in kindergarten classrooms across the globe. 

Everything is a gift, really
The air we breathe, the trees that support us, our talents, our relationships. The natural world is giving us gifts on the daily.  A walk outside can nourish us more than any material object. If we are open to that.