Have you planned out your holiday gift giving yet? If you’re anything like me, you might be waiting until the last minute. But whether every single present is already wrapped and ready, or you’ll hit the shops on Christmas Eve, giving gifts is a curious but central part of being human.
While researching my new book, “So Much Stuff,” on how humanity has come to depend on tools and technology over the last 3 million years, I became fascinated by the purpose of giving things away. Why would people simply hand over something precious or valuable when they could use it themselves?
To me as an anthropologist, this is an especially powerful question because giving gifts likely has ancient roots. And gifts can be found in every known culture around the world.
So, what explains the power of the present?
Undoubtedly, gifts serve lots of purposes. Some psychologists have observed a “warm glow” – an intrinsic delight – that’s associated with giving presents. Theologians have noted how gifting is a way to express moral values, such as love, kindness and gratitude, in Catholicism, Buddhism and Islam. And philosophers ranging from Seneca to Friedrich Nietzsche regarded gifting as the best demonstration of selflessness. It’s little wonder that gifts are a central part of Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and other winter holidays – and that some people may even be tempted to regard Black Friday, the opening of the year-end shopping season, as a holiday in itself.
But of all the explanations for why people give gifts, the one I find most convincing was offered in 1925 by a French anthropologist named Marcel Mauss.
A thoughtful gift can feel worth more than its cash value.
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Giving, receiving, reciprocating
Like many anthropologists, Mauss was puzzled by societies in which gifts were extravagantly given away.
For example, along the northwest coast of Canada and the United States, Indigenous peoples conduct potlatch ceremonies. In these dayslong feasts, hosts give away immense amounts of property. Consider a famous potlatch in 1921, held by a clan leader of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation in Canada who gave community members 400 sacks of flour, heaps of blankets, sewing machines, furniture, canoes, gas-powered boats and even pool tables.
In a now-famous essay titled “The Gift,” originally published almost a century ago, Mauss sees potlaches as an extreme form of gifting. Yet, he suggests this behavior is totally recognizable in most every human society: We give things away even when keeping them for ourselves would seem to make much more economic and evolutionary sense.
Mauss observed that gifts create three separate but inextricably related actions. Gifts are given, received and reciprocated.
The first act of giving establishes the virtues of the gift giver. They express their generosity, kindness and honor.
The act of receiving the gift, in turn, shows a…
