麻豆传媒

THERE鈥橲 a Latin proverb, per angusta ad augusta, which translates as 鈥渢hrough trial to triumph鈥�. Literally speaking, 鈥渁ngusta鈥� refers to a narrow passageway. It gives us the English word 鈥渁nxious鈥�, signalling a place that presses against you, where the walls are tight, and you might be too big to get through. Anxiety is the feeling that you might not make it out the other side.

Small wonder then if people feel anxious at Christmas: Yuletide forms a narrow passage between one year and the next, through which all sorts of large and important things (seeing relatives, cooking a feast, buying presents, even going to church) have to pass. When you鈥檙e crammed inside the Christmas tunnel, hemmed in by a 2-metre-high conifer, the wan light of January can seem a long way off.

What adds to the anxiety is that most of the things we do in this tunnel aren鈥檛 done much during the rest of the year. After all, how often do you roast a turkey? So we鈥檙e not that practised at them, and consequently more likely to feel stressed. There鈥檚 a theory that what the psyche likes least is a change in its routine, and Christmas, for all its familiarity, marks a great annual convulsion. The psyche recoils from such intrusions into its steady state, then throws up its defences.

What the psyche loves, however, is being rewarded, and this is where Christmas can overcome the anxiety it creates 鈥� or at least offset it. The rewards come in the shape of presents, which the psyche interprets as tokens of love. You won鈥檛 be surprised to be told that academics in cognitive psychology departments the world over are busy producing evidence about the power of reward and its connection to dopamine, because it鈥檚 something we鈥檝e all experienced directly 鈥� albeit without the technical description. To be rewarded with a gift is to be subtly told that someone loves you, and we love nothing better than to be loved. Even adults will be momentarily taken back to a warm, childlike feeling of deserving the treat that has been given.

Soothing as that sounds, gift exchange is rarely unequivocal, not least because we feel increasing guilt at the conspicuous consumption that comes with Christmas, and the carbon footprint of all those trips home to see family. What鈥檚 more, from the late 19th and 20th century anthropologist Marcel Mauss to one of his most subtle critics, philosopher Jacques Derrida, there is now a full shelf of humanities research which tags this ancient practice of exchanging gifts as problematic.

The rub is whether a gift is or is not an economic object. When you give a gift you are, in theory, outside economic concerns: by definition, you don鈥檛 ask to be paid for it so, to this extent, a gift constitutes a supra-economic or 鈥渁neconomic鈥� phenomenon. A gift wants to pretend it wasn鈥檛 bought and paid for, but conjured out of nothing.

To this idea, that gifts sit innocently on the edge of the economy, there is, of course, a robust retort. Pretending a gift doesn鈥檛 belong to the economic system is to fall foul of that same environmentalist awareness that questions the ethics of winter breaks in the sunshine. We idealise the gift, ascribing to it semi-mystical qualities, when we turn a blind eye to where it has come from. Perhaps we should feel ashamed of the wilful ignorance by which, for example, we give socks at Christmas, airbrushing out the fact that real labour went into their making, labour far out of proportion with the wages received. To rip off the wrapping paper is to rip off the producers of the product it enwraps; presents abuse peasants.

Instead, we should recognise that we鈥檙e part of a much larger system of producers and consumers. Gift-giving, apparently so humanising, creates a form of consumerist delusion, denying the economic reality of the many in remote places in favour of the illusions enjoyed by the privileged few. People like us. Or, if that sounds too much like the Grinch stealing the fun out of Christmas, there are less parsimonious ways of acknowledging the economic colouring of gifts.

鈥淕ift-giving denies the economic reality of many: presents abuse peasants鈥�

Have you ever, for example, packaged up your gift with its receipt, in case the recipient wanted to exchange it? It鈥檚 a practice which, while recognising that the present was paid for, hopes not to undermine its status as gift. Despite the slip of till roll, you still offer the gift as a free good, given as much from the heart as the high street or mall. Besides, including the receipt amounts to an extra gift because you are giving your recipient the gift of choice, the option of selecting an alternative.

Some might argue that this strategy masks a more devious motive whereby we enclose the receipt to show how much we鈥檝e spent, but most of us behave like the three wise men approaching Jesus with gold, frankincense and myrrh 鈥� the ritual on which Christmas gifts are based 鈥� and scrub out the price well in advance. In any case, we all know that gifts have economic value, so we don鈥檛 need to labour the point.

More importantly, it is, as they insist on saying, the thought that counts, and that, if anything, lies outside the economy. Even if you may realistically expect gratitude for your thought, the thought transcends the market, making it a gift proper. For to give a gift in good faith is to give absolutely, that is, without anticipating payback, economic or otherwise. According to Derrida, it is this that makes the gift an apparently 鈥渢ranscendental鈥� phenomenon.

Giving with an almost spiritual selflessness, the giver of gifts thus becomes if not holier than Christ, at least holier than thou. But one person giving involves another person taking, and being on the receiving end of such goodness can translate as a burden. At least when the receipt is enclosed you can see what you owe, and how you might level things up, whereas being given to can result in a feeling of helplessness. The giver has more power than the taker, and in Anglo-Saxon societies, for example, the alpha male was known as the mathum gifa, or gift-giver (mathum being 鈥渢reasure鈥�). It鈥檚 a concept that J. R. R. Tolkien revived in The Lord of the Rings. Paradoxically, when you dispense your wealth, you gain in status; the one who bestows gifts is the one who holds sway.

But the converse is also true: he who receives is impotent, a condition that led the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to recommend 鈥渁venging the gift鈥�. For if power comes from giving gifts, and you鈥檙e unfortunate enough to be given them, you should even them up as soon as possible, and so restore your status. After all, when you鈥檙e given something you鈥檙e immediately indebted, and when you鈥檙e indebted, you鈥檙e bound. Unlike economic transactions, which are clean and allow both parties to walk away afterwards, gifts create a bond.

Indeed, according to Mauss鈥檚 disciple, the late Claude L茅vi-Strauss, they signal relationship and connection. Where economics is about a symmetry of give and take, of supply and demand, gifts depend on asymmetry, such that when you give you always give more than you expect in return or it鈥檚 not a gift. This imbalance is what fosters interest between the two parties involved: being asymmetrical, gifts create or preserve relationships. We know this especially from giving presents at Christmas: it reinforces the closest relationships we have.