On The Takeaway, we often have conversations about improvement, or fixing things that are broken. Politics, policy, business, economics, daily life, how we live in our communities. Today, in honor of Christmas, The Takeaway looks at how to improve the holiday gift giving tradition.
The question over how and why we give gifts is central to the holiday season. What do we really value about gift giving and receiving?
Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, says there are ways of measuring the value of gift giving and getting. It turns out that all of the time we spend thinking up special gifts for each person may be wasted effort.
DT Strain, a humanist minister and writer of The Houston Chronicle's The Spiritual Naturalist blog, has a response to the whole idea of Christmas gifts. Strain is calls for a moratorium on giving presents. He asks for gifts in the form of charity and time.
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Comments [5]
Professor Epley makes a ton of sense. Get one gift on the wish list, and one gift that would have been on the gift list, had the person thought of it. D.T. Strain makes sense as well, and can be combined with Epley Of course, this genius insight of journalism coming on Christmas day is dumb...
Epley And Strain Equation will work nicely next year
The best gifts I got or gave celebrated a Christmas when my father waas out of work & we were broke. My mother built a tiny house for my troll collection--with tiny tables, loaves of bread, pies & even a real slate fireplace! For my out-of-work father I managed--with the help of a Swiss bank manager, who let me deposit MUCH less than the minimum amount--to give him a Swiss bank account. We were BROKE; but we were secure in the world, with love, creativity AND a Swiss bank account.
The best gift that I can recall giving, was the year that my then girlfriend and I informed all our relatives that we were taking the money, which we would spend on gifts, and donate it to the local "soup kitchen". (There was an organization in town, that provided full coarse dinners for the disadvantaged on Thanksgiving, and Christmas day.) We suggested to our relatives that they do the same. To our great surprise, they were NOT AT ALL PLEASED with this choice! But that what we did, for that year anyway...
What about thank yous? Doesn't anyone give proper thank yous anymore? I always tip the woman who does my nails 20%. She has been doing my nails for about 8 months. I gave her a $50 dollar bill in a Christmas money card. The same day I gave someone else $50 and another person $100. I never heard anything from anyone. Not a phone call and certainly not a thank you note. I went to get my nails done yesterday. The woman was going on about herself as usual and threw in "did I tell you I liked your card? I meant to text you but I got all caught up in things I was doing." I always mail written thank you notes for gifts and when someone goes above and beyond. If someone treats for dinner or does something small I at least send an email message. What happened to saying thank you?
The best gift I have ever gotten in my life is my wife and pea-in-the-pod, Melanie.
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