Gift Giving in an Age of Abundance
How to give when nothing seems to matter
When I was a child, every Christmas was precious because my parents saved and sacrificed to afford to buy us presents and I owned few toys. I loved Legos, but had a very small allowance and could not afford to buy many of them myself during the year. My two most memorable Christmases are when my parents bought me the Lego pirate ship and when they gave me my cousin’s hand-me-down Diamondback BMX bike. I played with that ship for years. I still have most of the pieces down in my basement in a tub of Legos my kids play with. And I rode that bike for a decade. Those gifts were precious to me because there was a distinct lack in my life. I had no good bike. I had few Legos to play with. Every gift was sacred. Everything counted. Everything.
When I had my own children, something changed about Christmas. Even though when we started having children my wife was only a part time college instructor and I was a graduate student, toys seemed to be cheaper (China?) and we could afford to give them more than I had when I was a kid. I was moving up the socioeconomic ladder, and that changed the nature of Christmas. As they grew up, we could afford to buy my son a Millenium Falcon Lego set (I would have died as a kid) as well as various other Star Wars and Harry Potter sets for all our kids. They enjoyed their toys, but I don’t think any of our kids viewed their toys as precious the way I did that pirate ship or that BMX bike. They lived in a world of abundance. I had lived in a world of scarcity. They are not the same worlds.
I don’t mean to give the impression that my children are ungrateful, I just think that for many people in the middle class in this age, gifts mean something different.1 And yet the social and corporate pressure to buy gifts remains the same. Every Christmas, we are pressured to go out and buy things for our children, family, and friends whether they want, need, or ought to have more stuff or not. We hound people for Christmas lists because we don’t know what to buy for them because we know they have what they need and want already (abundance). We look through Amazon gift lists for suggestions because we are hungry for products to buy for the sake of buying something. It’s consumption for the sake of consumption, sort of. We do desire to love someone by giving a gift. It’s just that we also know that we are obligated to buy something.
There is something powerful about gift giving. It’s part of what makes Christmas magical: the sacrifice of self for another, the excitement, the offering. But what if the offering is an empty vessel? What if we’re just buying different shapes of plastic for each other? Does it really mean anything? Is it an act of love?
Love affirms the existence of another being. In what way are we affirming and delighting in them if we are just going through the motions of buying them gifts? It must be in the intentionality, the attention to the personhood that the gift becomes an affirmation of their being. When you deeply consider the person and their needs and desires and state in the world, and find a gift that suits them perfectly, that is an act of love that affirms them. It shows them that you sacrificed time and effort into finding something meaningful for them.
Time is the real gift. Time is what you offer someone buy looking for the right present and spending time considering the person’s needs and desires. Time is what we give people with our attention. Corporations draw our attention towards products to buy to fulfill our duties to our loved ones in a frenetic pace. Here’s another product. Try this. Consider this. Here’s a similar product. What about this. And so on. The pressure is intense to make a decision and to overshop and to consume extra, just to be safe, just to make sure that you have demonstrated your love sufficiently in a world of abundance. Like all addictions, more of the same is required to satisfy. In this case, more gifts are necessary since the standard of abundance is higher.
But I don’t think that’s the case. I think what our loved ones really need is us. I think they need our attention. Yes, buy them gifts and be thoughtful and intentional about it. But more important than the gifts will be your presence. You are the gift in a world of abundance, because a world of abundance is one in which the human person is diminished for the sake of distractions and products and services. Give your attention to them. Spend time with your loved ones. Put away your phone and look them in the eye. Play games with them. Relax and be playful. That is the gift. And in that way you show Christ to your loved ones.
In Philippians 4:11-13, Paul talks about living through scarcity and abundance:
11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
In whichever world we find ourselves in, our strength is in Christ, our hope is in Christ. This means that we can rest and delight in the presence of loved ones who are gifts from God to us. We can be gifts to others by being present. We can be grateful for abundance without holding onto the things of this world. And we can enjoy the few gifts we have when we live in scarcity.
There are many ways to address the challenge of abundance, especially with children. You can intentionally limit the number of toys they can own. You can require their Christmas lists to include books and clothes and things they need as well as things they want. You can give handmade gifts. You can teach your children to give to those less fortunate (because for many it is a time of scarcity, not abundance). All these are excellent, practical strategies. But what should undergird all of these is your presence. You are the scarce, desired gift. Give them your time and attention. Give them your love and warmth. Sacrifice yourself for them. Be an embodied presence as the Christ child was an embodied child on Christmas morning.
I recognize that many people are not in the middle class right now and are suffering economically due to inflation and tarifs.