Exchanging Gifts

The Christmas season is about here. For sure, thoughts of gifts are now beginning to fill everyone’s minds. Either gifts to receive or gifts to give.

There is a popular practice among certain groups to exchange gifts at Christmas. This is usually held with prior agreement of a certain value for each gift entered. The whole thing is more like a business transaction than a meaningful friendly exchange.

The objective of promoting goodwill among the participants with an exchange of gifts is often not achieved. Instead, disappointments emerge when people receive gifts they do not like or gifts of perceivably lesser value than the ones they gave. In the first place, if participants in the exchanging of gifts wanted to make sure that they get back their own gifts’ worth, it’s better to forget about the whole exercise. They might as well go and buy things they like and keep it for themselves.

The idea behind the exchanging of gifts is to allow for sincere generosity to show. One who has much resources may give more; one who has little may give whatever is possible, no matter how small. In that way, everybody gets to have a hint of each other’s actual capacities. In that way, the affluent may take it upon themselves to help the impoverished.

Expensive material things are more easily appreciated, indeed; but sincere intentions matter profoundly as well. If you give five while you can actually afford to give twenty, the act may be generous enough. But when you give away half of the only thing you have – that is a sublime act. It is kind to give out of one’s abundance, holy to partake of another’s difficulty even in the light of one’s own.

It’s easy to give away our extras, what we no longer need. It’s the practical thing to do. There’s no point in holding on to anything we have no more use for. But to part of something we ourselves need, for the reason that someone else is in greater or more immediate need for it – the gesture can often do more for the recipient than what the present itself can.

They say it is our nature to be selfish. There is, perhaps, some truth to that. But, as we may all have observed, we are selfish and selfless at the same time. Selfishness maybe our instinct, but selflessness is our highest yearning. We feel joy when we give, because, basically, we are satisfying a deep desire. When necessary, we are even willing to die for others.

There are those, however, who feel deceived or abused when asked to give. Feeling hounded and harassed, they give – but grudgingly, complainingly. To these people the burden of giving is still beneficial, because it brings to their attention the possibility of a grave personal malady. Lack of feeling towards others can lead to emotional death, in the same manner that lack of food can cause physical death.

No one is too poor to not be able to give a gift. When money is really scarce, we may still give abundantly, give something of ourselves: our wisdom, our talent, our service, our warm companionship. Whatever gift is chosen, the giving must not be an enforced obligation but a welcome opportunity for sharing – sharing not only what one has but, essentially, what one is.

Compassion and love can never be bought and are, therefore, the most meaningful gifts of all. Anyone can afford them, but only with sincere intentions. They may not bring out that instantaneous smile that a physical gift can educe; their value does not readily show on the faces but in the lives of those that receive them.

A gift does not only benefit the person who receives it. It equally benefits the giver, too. There is no satisfaction quite like in making someone happy. In the final analysis, the kindness that one does to another is joy that he brings to himself. Viewed this way, every gift given has an exchange.