articles

Graciousness is the Most Important Gift

By Jean Flynn Ray December 21, 2017

My husband, Steve, and I are spending our first holiday season in our Pueblo home. As with every holiday season, we are faced with navigating the challenging social landscape of gift giving. However, it is magnified this year because we have both old and new friends to consider. I find one of the most anxiety-ridden elements of gift giving is the social norm of reciprocity. Vocabulary.com defines reciprocity as, “When two or more people or nations have equal exchanges of goods or services, they are enjoying reciprocity, a situation where each enjoys an equal benefit from the relationship.”

This reciprocity in gift-giving has been extensively studied throughout history. In 1925, the French anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, hypothesized that when an object is given as a gift, it becomes inextricably tied to the giver. “To make a gift of something is to make a present of some part of oneself.” Mauss also identified three obligations associated with gift exchange:

  1. Giving: which builds a social relationship
  2. Receiving: which signifies acceptance of the social relationship
  3. Reciprocating: which demonstrates the recipient’s integrity

In 2015, Lauren Human, director of the Social Interaction and Perception Lab at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and Lara Aknin of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, conducted a large online survey. It suggested that people buy gifts with the recipient in mind and prefer receiving gifts that best reflect their own tastes. Human and Aknin wondered if this approach to gift giving overlooked the bonding described by Mauss. So they tested the theory.

They asked more than 100 students to choose an iTunes song and give it to a loved one. Half were told to choose songs that revealed the knowledge of the recipient the others were told to choose songs that revealed something about themselves. Results exposed that the recipients of a song that revealed something of the giver felt a closer relationship bond. The conclusion is that for a present to be meaningful, you need to give away a little of yourself just as Mauss had theorized in 1925.

Okay, so a package from my distant sister-in-law arrived in the mail yesterday. It is treats from Harry & David. My husband reflects that these treats are “my sister’s way of keeping an old family tradition alive.” It should also be noted that both of their parents are deceased. So, Sister Sue is giving of herself, right? However, Steve and I are not in need of any more treats with the all the office holiday parties and the hectic holiday schedule that eats up all our workout time. We have received an unwanted gift.

Now what? It’s only three days before Christmas and we didn’t send anything to Sister Sue and family. In a survey by the Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico, Catherine Roster asked almost 200 people to remember an occasion on which they gave a present that was poorly received. The survey found that among the consequences from giving an unwanted gift, only one consequence risked changing the way the giver viewed the relationship, the simple failure of the receiver to say “thank you.”

This comes as a relief to me, as it should to you. It tells me that reciprocity in gift exchange can be as simple as a thank you note. We don’t have to buy that perfect gift we just need to be gracious receivers. A hearty thank you is another way of giving of yourself. I will be certain to send a personal note to my distance sister-in-law, right after I find someone with which to share the Harry & David treats. Remember one of the most important items on your holiday list is thank you notes.