One of our earliest lessons in life is to accept gifts gracefully, no matter how awful they are. We are told to be grateful and to remember that “it’s the thought that counts”. The problem with this advice is that the two demands often work against each other. Sometimes, the more you think about the thought that went into the present – or perhaps the lack of it – the more gratitude evaporates and anger or resentment takes its place.
First there are the presents that gently chide, nudging you to do things the giver sees as much-needed self-improvements. These can be intellectual or cultural, like giving the complete works of David Foster Wallace to people who only like reading whodunnits. Worse, perhaps, are the gifts that suggest you need a makeover: hair straighteners for people who have no interest in smoothing out their kinks.
If we are to nurture gratitude, we should grit our teeth and remember that these patronising benefactors have only our best interests at heart. The trouble is that the thought that counts most with gifts like these is that you are not good enough, and you need your superior friends or more sensible family members to set you on the straight and narrow.
Such gifts illustrate why concern for others needs to encompass both head and heart. Empathy without understanding becomes all about the person who is concerned and not the person concerned for, when real empathy should be the other way around. Presents that seek to correct flaws in others only reveal an even bigger flaw in the giver.
While some gifts show too much thought of the wrong variety, others show too little of the right kind. When someone we don’t know well, like a distant relative, gives us something we have no conceivable use or wish for, we can easily laugh it off. But when it comes from someone we thought knew us better, it can be deeply disconcerting, and can even make us question the nature of the relationship.
It’s easy to overreact to an ill-chosen present, of course. People are busy and we’ve all made choices that seem baffling in retrospect. We could even choose to see a puzzling gift as a good sign that others think we’re open and varied in our interests.
More difficult to excuse are the gifts that flagrantly ignore your clear, settled and expressed wishes. For instance, some people insist that they do not want a lot of money spent on them, perhaps for political or ethical reasons. They hate the consumerist excess of Christmas and yearn for greater simplicity. They might request that if someone really does want to give, a donation be made to a favourite charity instead. If people close to them persist in buying expensive, frivolous things, they are consciously flouting the desires of those they are supposedly out to please.
Such festive refuseniks go too far for some who claim they are pompous killjoys, imposing their joyless puritanism on others. Worse, their insistence that others strictly follow their values can be seen as a kind of selfish arrogance dressed up as altruism.
But I think irritation with those who dare to be different is just another symptom of the fact that when it comes to gift-giving, we care more about what we like doing than what people want. We don’t say people who want pampering presents are imposing their shallow hedonism on us, so why accuse those who prefer to receive little or nothing of foisting their austere values on others?
Gift-giving is fraught because it exposes the nature of the relationship between giver and recipient in sometimes uncomfortable ways. It can reveal the cracks in the facade we try to build: that of the perfect Christmas, with the perfect family and perfect friends.
But no one who is not the perfect friend or family member should complain too much about the flaws of their nearest and dearest. As we spend the holidays opening imperfect gifts, eating over or undercooked food, and getting sucked into petty arguments, we are reminded that the most honest festivals celebrate family and friendship in all their imperfections. That, perhaps, is the thought that really counts.
