The culture of gift-giving


Gift exchanges secure social and economic harmony in every culture

The culture of gift-giving

It's better to give than to receive, even during a recession.

Photograph by: Getty Images , Getty Images

Less than a month until Christmas, and already the pre-Christmas sales are upon us as anxious retailers watch a slowing economy and seek to stimulate consumers' appetites with bargains not usually seen until Boxing Day.

Yet, while many in these uncertain economic times rethink their spending priorities, the tradition of giving presents is not about to shudder to a halt. Most of us will be more likely to give up our own pleasures -- dining out, taking a trip -- before we stop giving Christmas gifts.

All across Canada the whispered negotiations have begun within families about what gift is just right for which child, parent, sibling, aunt, uncle or in-law; what's appropriate for a workmate or employee and won't send the wrong message. There will, of course, be the usual umbrage at the commercialized Christmas.

Some will complain about the secularization of what they believe should be an exclusively religious rite, although the "pagan" core of Christmas long predates its adoption by Christians. Some will denounce materialism they identify in too-profligate gift-giving.

However, these annual lamentations seem no more likely to have an effect in 2008 than in previous years. Christmas in all its guises is here to stay -- secular as well as religious, commercial as well as spiritual -- and it won't fade any time soon.

Why? Because at its core Christmas is about the ceremonial exchange of gifts, one of the fundamental activities that defines us as human beings.

The globe-girdling culture of gift-giving, in which Christmas is just one occasion at which presents are ceremonially exchanged, is so entrenched in what it means to be human that it's likely to endure as long as our species prevails.

Anthropologists call the conceptual matrix in which all this gift-giving occurs "reciprocity." It is generally considered the archetype of an informal economy, the first economy, in which every human being participates, which is why the ancient rituals of gift exchange are so deeply embedded in our complex modern economies.

Precisely when the first gift was given will always be a mystery.

Circumstantial evidence suggests it was probably around 75,000 years ago, just as fully modern human beings emerged into the evolutionary record in what's called the Middle Paleolithic.

The best of that evidence is scant, 39 tiny snail shells -- each about the size of a pea, each carefully perforated as if to be strung as a necklace -- and two slabs of red ochre decorated with diamond-like geometric patterns.

This first evidence of symbolic human adornment, the dawn of a vast jewelry and design esthetic that now permeates our world -- consider all those males agonizing over which earrings or perfume to buy for wives and girlfriends this Christmas -- was discovered during the excavation of a dusty, nondescript site in South Africa.

Found along the Indian Ocean coast in 1991, the Blombos Cave at first appeared to be a much later Neolithic site occupied only for a few thousand years and relatively recently. Then, working down to the cave bed, archeologist Christopher Henshilwood made an electrifying discovery.

Beneath a layer of Neolithic detritus he uncovered a second, undisturbed layer of sand and under that, bones, stone projectile points, tools and other artifacts from much earlier human habitation.

The site was so old the artifacts couldn't be dated using the standard carbon 14 method, which calculates elapsed time by measuring the decay of a common radioactive isotope over millennia.

Using other dating methods, Henshilwood determined that the cave must first have been abandoned about 70,000 years ago when sea levels suddenly fell. Sand blew into the cave, burying and preserving the human debris. Next, a huge dune choked the entrance.

If Henshilwood's theory about the function of these ancient perforated snail shells is correct and they do represent the earliest known evidence of personal ornamentation, then a significant realignment of anthropological thinking must take place about when our ancestors developed the unique human traits that so distinguish us from our fellow animal travellers on Spaceship Earth.

What does seem indisputable is evidence of a stunning revolution during the Upper Paleolithic, the period that follows the time when the Blombos Cave was inhabited. From the appearance of those small shells, personal adornment explodes across the human-occupied world.

Why is this eruption of art, decoration and design so important? Distinctive elements of clothing, jewelry, body markings with paint or body modification with tattoos, scarification or piercing, are all means of projecting an identity, argues Randall White of New York University, who is quoted in The Wisdom of the Bones: In Search of Human Origins, a book by anthropologists Alan Walker and Pat Shipman.

"Then, as now, personal adornments almost certainly symbolized both individual identity and that individual's allegiance or membership in some larger group," Walker and Shipman wrote.

Why is this significant? Because other anthropologists theorize that this revolution in personal ornamentation, which coincided with denser human populations inhabiting bigger sites, is evidence that larger social groups had begun to coalesce and to cooperate for mutual benefit.

"This new pattern of living meant that suddenly there was both a need and an occasion for demonstrating visually that you were part of this group and distinct from that. . . . It is easy to envision that these periodic gatherings would also have been occasions for important exchanges: of potential mates and of information," Shipman and Walker observed.

Scientists are constrained by the conservative rules of their disciplines. Columnists are not. And so, in the luxury of conjecture, it seems entirely plausible that it was during these periodic exchanges of knowledge, technology and genes that gift-giving arose as one of the symbolic transactions by which mutual obligations could be established and codified.

Wherever the anthropology eventually goes, it seems reasonable to speculate that sometime around the period when human beings began decorating themselves to make symbolic statements either to each other or to supernatural beings -- most probably both -- they also began giving gifts to each other and to propitiate supernatural powers.

It seems self-evident that the rituals of gift-giving are inextricably bound up in what it means to be human at both the personal and the collective level. Gift-giving is common to every human culture.

Gift-giving customs and rituals are as widespread and persistent as the family unit; as the basic rituals of food; as rules governing sexual conduct, courtship and rules about the worship of deities, which range from local gods to unnameable abstractions.

From the elaborate rituals of sacrifice and votive offerings seen in ancient religions to the simple sharing of greetings and food that characterize the present, gifts are associated with many religious festivals even today -- Christmas, Hanukkah, the end of Ramadan, Diwali, Kwanzaa -- but they are also associated with recognition of much more personal rites of passage.

We give and expect gifts to mark birthdays, marriages and graduations. Gifts accompany the building of romantic attachments, from pubescent posies to engagement rings to anniversary roses. We use gifts to establish social rank and enhance personal prestige by redistributing wealth. Potlatch ceremonies of the Northwest Coast are one good example; the tradition of philanthropy among wealthy capitalists is another. Public gifts acknowledge accomplishments in the arts, athletics, science and business although we call them prizes, medals and bonuses. Gift-giving is so integrated into world business that it's a foolish corporate executive who doesn't assiduously study the customs and traditions where transactions are planned.

This culture of gift-giving is ubiquitous precisely because it is so important. It is the foundation of our notions of hospitality and generosity -- the creation of obligation and the expected fulfilment of that obligation. This lies at the heart of family, clan, tribe and, ultimately, the social contract that defines the nation-state.

If the archeological clues about gift-giving that survive from pre-literate, pre-historic cultures are scarce, the historic, our literary record, is rife with evidence. Gift-giving turns up in our earliest literature.

The Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh mentions gift-giving by the hero and the implications of accepting or spurning gifts.

The Greek epic The Iliad turns on the abuse of hospitality and generosity, and Troy falls when it accepts the gift of the wooden horse devised by wily Odysseus.

Herodotus lists ceremonial gifts given by the wealthy king, Croesus: a golden tripod, two golden heifers, a golden shield. Romans list tributes from sub-kings. Throughout the feudal ages from Asia to Europe, liege-lords bestow gifts of land upon loyal vassals and expect services in return.

Closer to our own time, Charles Dickens' still popular novel A Christmas Carol is essentially a secular parable about the barren spiritual landscape that is the fate of those who, like Ebenezer Scrooge, shun the principles of generosity symbolized by the giving.

Scrooge, squatting on his wealth, fearful of personal want, is the true pauper in Dickens' story. It is the materially impoverished clerk, Bob Cratchit, determined to give what he can ill afford and extending this generosity even to his mean employer, who is genuinely rich.

In Dickens' novel, Scrooge's redemption comes not in some religious epiphany but with his awakened material generosity. It is the giving of gifts that symbolizes his return to the spiritually nourishing embrace of family, friends and, by extension, the community at large.

By giving, Scrooge becomes human once again.

To cultural anthropologists, these transactions involving the symbolic giving and receiving of gifts provide the social glue that makes possible the friendships, loyalties, alliances and coalitions upon which all human social organizations, from the nuclear family to the complex modern state, ultimately rest.

This ability to create and maintain elaborate social organizations in which there are incentives to work together gave human beings a crucial evolutionary adaptation which enabled them to liberate themselves from the vicissitudes of their physical environment.

So it's hardly surprising that gift-giving in all its manifestations remains among the most durable of human activities.

Most of us in Canada are even now preparing for the annual ritual of giving presents at Christmas, nominally a Christian festival. For most of us, it is now a largely secular affair. This development pains some of the devout, although it shouldn't.

Christmas has become increasingly secularized precisely because it contains an inherently ecumenical appeal. It both addresses and institutionalizes many of the pre-Christian, pre-Islamic, pre-Hindu, pre-Buddhist, pre-codified religious values that were created and reinforced by that initial gift-giving culture of reciprocity which made possible human social organization.

It is the gift-giving aspect of the secular Christmas, the ritual celebration of the gift as a symbol of generosity and hospitality, which is most recognizable to non-Christians. And for Christians, of course, the Christmas ceremony has another significance, symbolic acknowledgment of God's gift of his son to redeem humanity.

Yet broader, older values are present, too: the reunification of scattered families and friends who gift one another, who feast together, who share with the less fortunate and who acknowledge our obligations even to strangers.

And, of course, the emphasis of children in the giving of Christmas presents is about the transmission of this culture of reciprocity and its values -- generosity, hospitality and altruism regardless of faith, creed, race or ethnicity -- from one generation to the next.

This, too, gives Christmas a powerful secular momentum.

What momentum it has, too. The gift-giving rituals surrounding Christmas have become a major economic driver on a global scale.

Assembly-line workers in Asia, retail shop clerks in Europe, postal workers and couriers in North America, impoverished writers and small book publishers, struggling musicians and florists' assistants, supermarket cashiers and restaurant servers all rely on the big bump of retail sales at Christmas to carry them through the leaner months of the year.

This is why everybody should pause to ponder the implications of a "Black Christmas" if consumers, spooked by the recession fears now rumbling around the world, should decide to severely prune their gift-giving this year.

Then the pain we're trying to avoid by hoarding our cash is likely to get much worse for those who depend upon an annual infusion of Christmas largesse into the economy. In other words, when we default on our transactional obligations as individuals, we suffer the consequences collectively -- which is precisely what our ancient and pervasive culture of reciprocal gift-giving evolved to avoid.



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