Gifting

Both the time of year (Mother’s Day) and an entry at ginmar sparked a thought on gifts.

Weird how a toss-away comment and a slew of billboards, commercials, pop-ups, and other ads just make one want to rant a bit.

This happens at practically every holiday – the inundation of ads demanding we buy this gift or that for our loved one. Usually quite impractical gifts, at that: high dollar items that reflect more on the giver than the giftee.

Giving high dollar gifts sends several messages, not all of them pleasant. If you’re in a dating situation, high dollar gifts are seen as payment – you’re buying the affections and attention of the one to whom you are giving them. Abusers will give expensive, high dollar, highly visible gifts to demonstrate that they really are nice people. It tries to cover up what they really did. Insecure people try to buy affection with high dollar items, especially if they can’t afford those high dollar items (a dozen long stem roses out of season, a diamond necklace, ultra-fancy chocolates).

Now, I love getting flowers. The cheap $2.50 bouquets at the grocery store please me quite well. High dollar bouquets belong to special occassions: a wedding, a funeral, a birth, senior prom (where you’re supposed to be showing off); receiving them at other times can be very uncomfortable, especially if the giver has expectations of reciprocity.

See, that completely defeats the purpose of gift-giving. A gift with strings attached is not a gift, but a bribe or a payment.

Another reason for high dollar gifts is as an apology, as the giver knows they’ve done something wrong and they try to gloss over it with some fancy, expensive gift, hoping that will fix things when all it really does is draw more attention to the wrong. In Germany, they have a phrase for that sort of gift: Drachenfutter or “Dragonfodder”. I don’t know if they still do it, but when I was growing up over there, the flower-sellers and chocolatiers and jewelers all knew if someone dashed up and bought one of their more expensive offerings, that it was Drachenfutter – a gift to be given to the spouse because the the buyer knew they either had done something wrong or were going to do something wrong and were preparing for it. The flowers, the chocolate, the jewels – they were food to satiate the angry dragon. And doesn’t that tell you alot about the gift? Sometimes it was as inocuous as being late for dinner or an appointment or date, other times it was to cover up an affair. The people receiving the Drachenfutter (usually wives or girlfriends, but by my generation, just as likely to be husbands or boyfriends) always knew it was an attempt to buy forgiveness. Sometimes it worked – often enough that the Germans created a name for it, anyway – and sometimes, it simply added fuel to the rage.

And that’s the trick with gifts that come with strings attached – will it work, or will it simply make things worse?

If it’s just the gift and no change in behavior is forthcoming, then it makes things worse.

Nobody understands gift-giving as well as the Germans, I feel. They have words for many different types of gifts: the Drachenfutter is but one. I won’t burden you with the words themeslves, some of them are difficult to pronounce if you haven’t spoken German before. There are the gifts of state – the gifts politicians and government officials are expected to exchange. The hostess gifts given to someone when you visit (usually flowers, sometimes wine or food, or something for the home). The gifts given to the parents of one’s date. The gifts of a boss to their employees (and not paid for by the company, nor part of expected bonuses and company gifts). The gifts given to service-givers such as the mail carrier, the utility meter readers, one’s chauffeur, one’s groundskeeper, one’s housekeeper, the caretaker at one’s place of employment, etc. These gifts are in addition to the usual tips.

Anyway, I believe Germans have perfected the art of casual gift-giving. Most gifts are small, personal but not intimate, and often ephemeral – like flowers, wine, food.

And, most German gifts are payments, small payments and acknowledgements of services rendered: the parents allowing one to date their child, the boss appreciative of the work their underlings do for them, the visitor happy for the chance to pay a visit to the host/ess.

Germans also have lots of seasonal gifts: the specialty gingerbreads for Elften-Elften and Valentine’s, the cookies given for special days, wooden spoons, collectible spoons, and more. And then there are the herzgeschenken – the gift of the heart given with no strings attached, simply because.

And of all the types of gifts there are, I feel the ones Americans want the most and receive the least are the herzgeschenken, right up there with the boss gifts.

I admit I give a lot of gifts because of habit. This is particularly true of gifts I give to my plumber, my electrician, the mail carrier at home and at work, the security guards, the librarians, the “sanitation engineers”, the meter readers, and others who perform regular services for me. I kind of wish I didn’t need a regular plumber, but it’s an old house, so the plumber is included in the gifts.

Herzgeschenken I don’t wait on holidays to give. The time to give a herzgeschenken is when I have it to give. And these aren’t usually high dollar items – a pretty rock, flowers from my garden, something I baked or cooked, a jewelry I made of found materials, some nifty neat toy I found at the flea market or arts festival. They are, almost always, something the other person likes or wants. The only message they carry is: I love you. I expect no reciprocity on these. It’s definitely not a “gift exchange” concept.

Actually, I can’t wrap my mind around “gift exchange” because – it’s not a gift if you expect to get something for it. It’s a trade.

That’s prbably the biggest reason I personally don’t do Chrsitmas gift-giving – it’s too reminiscent of a blind barter, and I dislike blind barters. It builds up expectations, and you never get what you expect. It’s worse than a blind date.

That may be why so many people are dissatisfied with Christmas gift giving – that whole “making a list” thing and hoping you get something that’s on the list when you barter the gifts you buy for (hopefully) the ones you want, or you barter your behavior and chores for them, and come up short.

As a veriloquist, I hearby propose that we stop calling it “gift” when we expect something in exchange for it and call it what it is: payment, bribe, inadequate apology, or blind barter.