Ahhh, it’s that time of year again—a
time of joy, love, happiness, and well of course, GIFTS!
Christmas, for most, has always been
about spending time with family, friends and loved ones. For students, it’s
mostly about not having to cook or do laundry. Many may also associate
Christmas with gift giving. With this, there are often many different emotions
or meanings that come with each gift given or received.
For example, throughout the holidays,
there may be different events you will attend, such as various Christmas
parties. With these parties, you may participate in ‘Secret Santa’, where you
are often required to buy for someone you may not know much about, such as an
employee from work. In this situation, gift giving on the givers part can often
be frustrating, difficult and time-consuming. To put into perspective, think
about a time when your work, class, organization, etc. decided to do a gift
exchange—were you ever assigned someone who you didn’t know much about? How
about someone you didn’t really like!? These situations do happen and often it
makes the gift hunt that much harder and frustrating. I recently read an
article called ‘The Dark Side of the Gift’, with various researchers and
studies done on gift giving. With this study, ethnographic methods and
projective techniques were used on a sample of 83 females, mostly upscale in
their occupation. The results from the sentence completion exercises resulted
to a common theme of negativity and ambivalence of the gift. Some responses
were fairly neutral, but mostly negative such as ‘At best, the wrong gift’ doesn’t
exist, seldom occurs’ or ‘may turn out alright’. It ‘could be accepted
graciously’, or ‘passed along’, ‘returned’. The wrong gift’ may be a ‘waste’,
it ‘disappoints’, ‘frustrates’, ‘annoys’, ‘upsets’ etc.
This study also examined different
emotions or ‘appropriateness’ to gift-giving. Have you ever received a really
nice gift from someone, something maybe also very expensive—something you felt
uncomfortable accepting due to the state of the relationship? This may be an
extreme example but think about your favourite car—now how would you feel about
receiving that car from a co-worker? A husband? A friend?—Which one would make
you feel more comfortable receiving the ‘perfect gift from’? We all have
different gift expectations based on level of appropriateness that we expect to
receive and the relationship with the giver. This example would also relate to
the term ‘overkill’ that was also mentioned in the article I read.
Another article that I read ‘Gift
Receipt and the Reformulation of Interpersonal Relationships’ mentioned 6 types
of relationship effects from gift-giving; strengthening (a gift given that
strengthens the relationship), affirmation (a gift that ensures the status of
the relationship), negligible effect (the gift-receipt experience has minimal
effect on quality of relationship), negative confirmation (gift validates an
existing negative quality between the giver and recipient), weakening (gift
harms the quality of the relationship) and severing (gift harms the quality and
dissolves the relationship completely). While reading all of these different
types of outcomes, I started to reflect on many of my personal gift-giving
experiences I encountered throughout the years.
For Christmas, my boyfriend bought me a
really nice gift wrapped perfectly with a shoe and purse ornament-- As much as
some may not care about the packaging of the gift, I found this thoughtful and
cute as he knows I love girly-items and he found a nice way to personalize the
gift for me. As we have been dating for a while, this was an affirmation
of our relationship in terms of understanding my tastes and
preferences. Alongside, he got me a Sen's t-shirt as
an anticipation of seeing a Sen's game together as I go to school in
Ottawa-- this was another way of affirmation.
Although many may associate gift-giving
with your friend, parents etc. buying you a gift, it is also very common for
individuals to buy themselves a gift, a term called self-gift.
Before coming home for Christmas, I went to the Rideau Centre during Black Friday to treat myself to a little retail therapy before finals. As my stress about finals started to kick in, I decided to buy some of my favourite items as comfort-- of course, I went to the most comforting female store out there, Bath and Body works. For those that know me, I love cute items along with candles and body lotion. This self-gift was a physiological way of me coping with the stress of exams.
Recently, my roommates and I agreed to exchange gifts and all buy for each other for Christmas. One of my roommates really wanted a Beyonce calendar and basically told me that if I bought it for her that would definitely be a guarantee of what she really wanted for Christmas. This almost felt like a burden in the sense that I felt obligated to get her the ‘Beyoncé calendar’ she wants in order to essentially get the gift I want as well (or else).... This also relates to the article that I mentioned previously ‘The Dark Side of Gift Giving’, where burden can sometimes occur within gift giving, where the receiver almost bribes the giver with gifts, often involving some sort of deal with strings attached. Additionally, some gifts could confirm the status of the relationship, such as your boyfriend buying flowers for you on a random day; affirming appreciation of your relationship between each other. Additionally, some gifts can take a relationship to ‘another level’ such as buying an engagement ring—demonstrating a new step in the relationship and strengthening the bond between the two individuals.
While reading through these two articles, I have gained much insight of the emotional strain and stress or sometimes joy and happiness that can go into gift giving. Everyone who knows me well, knows I love to dress nice and love beautiful clothes. However, I absolutely HATE the actual shopping and spending money process within stores. I often get overwhelmed and start to get cranky within an hour of shopping-- often when I am in stores with crowds of people or during crazy times such as Black Fridays, I often find myself buying things I normally wouldn't buy. Often at the end of my crazy shopping-spree, I sometimes find myself with some buyers remorse simply because I started to feel pressured or confused while shopping. For these overwhelming reasons, I personally enjoy online shopping, where I am in a controlled environment with no lines, screaming kids (even adults), etc. The only default to online shopping is the restriction of trying clothes on.
Nonetheless, these articles have definitely made me become a little more careful with what and how I choose certain gifts for particular individuals, and the possible effects that can occur after the recipient has received the gift. Check out this hilarious video regarding gift giving. This video has various clips of children opening presents from their parents that were intentionally ‘bad gifts’, just to see their children's reactions. As funny as this video is, it is very interesting as it confirms some of the findings in the articles I read, along with properly demonstrating ‘negative affirmation’ of gift giving:
(This is 5 minutes long, but it is 5 minutes worth watching).
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Sources:
Sherry, McGrath and Levy (1993) The Dark Side of the Gift
Solomon, M. R., Zaichkowsky, J. L. and Polegato, R. (2013) Consumer Behaviour: Buying, Having, and Being, Sixth Canadian Edition. Toronto: Prentice Hall Canada.
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