Two of the dearest neighbours my family has ever had were elderly widowers. Byron shared a fence with us, Mario lived opposite. Both were eager gardeners, both loved our kids, both showered us with gifts. Byron, a retired police officer, often popped up from behind his fence to chat. He’d comment on the weather and the news, on the lotto jackpot that he never won but often invested in, pledging us a very generous share. He would pass us vegetables, slowly grown, quickly given. There were ice-creams too, whole boxes of choc-wedges, for the kids. He’d joke they’d fallen in his trolley at the shops, acting all surprised, and the kids would play along with happy grins.
Meanwhile, I’d pass him generous portions of whatever I’d been baking, which he’d praise excessively. I still felt in his debt, but I knew he wasn’t keeping an account.
Then there was Mario, who could build anything from an elaborate rat trap to a boat, and had the garage to prove it. When he saw us walking past his house, he’d intercept and usher us inside. He’d open a top cupboard in the kitchen, take down ‘chokkies’ for each child, then take me to the garden for some greens. Even when my youngest was too small for solid food, he got a chocolate bar as well. Toblerone will always make me think of Mario.
While Byron would accept small offerings in return, Mario consistently declined. But he wouldn’t let me refuse him. I understood he wanted only to give, not to receive; I came to accept it, but I still found it hard. We’re so used to transactional relationships: to buying and selling, owing and paying, to exchanging like for like. We’re less accustomed to accepting kindness graciously without expecting, or constructing, attached strings.
It’s the time of year when gifts are front-of-mind and strings are often in play. I’m sure most of us know people whose sense of our appreciation depends on the value of what we give them. Many of us will be comparing what we give a loved one with what they give to us. Was the exchange even? Or did our gift fall short and disappoint?
Writing for The Conversation, anthropologist Chip Colwell observes that gifts are found in every known culture, and suggests the most convincing explanation is found in Marcel Mauss’s 1925 essay ‘The Gift’. Mauss observed that after a gift is given by one party and received by another, their roles are reversed, which creates a kind of loop. Colwell notes that it is the last step that makes gifts unique. Unlike an exchange of money for goods — a transaction that begins, then ends — gift-giving tends to be reciprocal, an act ‘bound up with morality’, one that can build and sustain relationships.
When a gift is given in a spirit of generosity and kindness and received with gratitude and grace, thus prompting a desire to reciprocate, it can bind people and communities. But when, rather than creating a degree of obligation a gift is given solely out of obligation, I can imagine the cycle becoming more one of burden than blessing.
I wonder how much of our gift-giving has become motivated more by a desire to avoid feeling obligated to another person or to avoid offending or upsetting them, than by a desire for the person’s good. Motives matter, and a cycle stripped of generosity, kindness, honour, gratitude and appreciation is surely counter-productive.
'One could argue that accepting charity is more in keeping with the spirit of Christmas than reciprocal exchange.'
When talking about the ‘legal frame of the gift’, Codrin Codrea says anthropological discourse about gift-giving ‘repeatedly underlines the impossibility of a free gift’, although he does note the existence of civil laws that explicitly describe donations as being unilateral and gratuitous.
Laws might sever strings in theory, but I’m not sure they can stop givers or receivers perceiving them. Even if a person donates a sum as charity without expecting anything in return, even if they ensure this legally and remain anonymous, the recipient might feel they are in someone’s debt. Even if the recipient had the means to reciprocate, the giver’s anonymity would prevent them, but they might still feel some associated obligation: to spend the gift ethically, wisely, well.
Similarly, an individual who has made an anonymous donation might feel the recipient owes it to them to spend it well. They can try not to let their left hand know what their right was doing, to resist congratulating themselves for their generosity, to resist feeling superior or justified in subsequent spending on luxuries (gifts) for themselves, but won’t necessarily succeed.
Also, a recipient might be ungrateful and feel no sense of obligation because they didn’t want a gift in the first place or because they felt entitled to it. It follows that the extent to which a gift that’s intended to be without ‘strings’ is, or isn’t, will depend on the circumstances, characters and perceptions of the parties involved.
In Gift and Counter-Gift: The Reciprocity Rule, professor Bernd Stauss, also citing Mauss, says the obligation the acceptance of a gift triggers is the most important principle of gift-giving behaviour, and that a gift and counter-gift should correspond in value. But he also speaks of how we can ‘deliberately violate’ the reciprocity rule, noting the existence of relationships and occasions when exceptions are acceptable — where a type of altruistic gift-giving that isn’t linked to the expectation of reciprocation is possible.
Many, when they hear the word ‘Christmas’ around this time of year, speak wearily of ‘all the gifts’ they ‘have’ to buy. But you could view the Christmas story as the ultimate violation of the reciprocity rule. It speaks of a God who humbled himself, of a king who came to serve, to give, to suffer, to save. There is no question in this case of a like-for-like exchange; no way to earn his favour or forgiveness — and no need to; they are offered as a gift. And yet, we have come to associate the celebration with obligation.
I treasure the relationships I have where birthdays and Christmases can pass with no gift because nothing was needed, but where needs that are identified are quickly met. In these relationships, if one of us is in a position to give the other something we know they’ll love, we won’t hesitate. The giver might save it for an upcoming occasion, or simply give it ‘just because’.
Colwell says gift-giving is ‘an expression of fairness because each present is generally of equal or greater value than what was last given … an expression of respect because it shows a willingness to honour the other person’ and a means of tethering people together in a cycle of mutual obligation. But he also wonders: ‘Are modern-day consumers unknowingly embodying Mauss’ theory a little too well? After all, many people today suffer not from the lack of gifts, but from an overabundance.’
He goes on to talk about the hundreds of dollars spent by many shoppers every year, and the billions of gifts that end up in landfill. He suggests modern-day gifting practices ‘may be the source of both awe and anger’. Obligation needn’t equal pure transaction; it doesn’t rule out desire and delight. But the more we let obligation drive our gift-giving — and the less our giving is motivated by the desire to honour, appreciate, even ‘bless’ one another — the more wasteful, even absurd, the practice and the cycle of gift-giving will be.
If news of weak economic growth and the continuing cost of living crisis are anything to go by, many Australians will need to rein in our gift-giving this Christmas. We might even need to suggest breaking with certain traditions, either because we can’t afford them; or because we know others in the family can’t, but are also unable to bear pleading poverty or accepting charity. And yet, one could argue that accepting charity is more in keeping with the spirit of Christmas than reciprocal exchange.
Because isn’t an all-powerful God being born as a human for our sake, a sort of charity? Especially when we can bring nothing to the table; approaching God with only empty hands. A virgin birth requires a miracle. To accept such grace without protest, with humble gratitude, would too.
Emma Wilkins is a Tasmanian journalist and freelance writer who's been published by magazines, journals and news outlets in Australia and beyond. You can find her at https://emmahwilkins.com/