GIVING has never been easy—as the Magi, those first Christmas givers,
discovered when they arrived with offerings fit for a king only to find
a babe lying in a stable. Still, in the early centuries following that
birth, giving was relatively simple. It meant giving up, a giving away
of one's self or one's worldly goods in imitation of Christ. The matter
grew more complex under the Protestant ethic, when gifts were bestowed
as a reward or incentive for good behavior. St. Nick was long depicted
as a scrawny saint who Carried presents in one hand and birch rods in
the other. But the art of giving grows most difficult in this permanent
holiday age of affluence, when, in the words of Poet Howard Nemerov,
Santa Claus himself is an “overstuffed confidence man who climbs at
night down chimneys, into dreams, with this world's goods.”What, in short, does one give in the Society that Has Everything? Giving
to the really needy has become depersonalized. For the rest, it is all
too often a compulsion. “The time of gift giving is a time of
reckoning,” says Alvin W. Gouldner, sociology professor at St. Louis'
Washington University. “We reckon up where we stand and whom we wish to
remain tied to. The giver has not only the anxiety of trying to guess
what the recipient would like, but also the added anxiety of projecting
a suitable image of himself.”Delight & BlightThat is putting it in the sociologist's typically unmerry way. But the
thought does define one of the cardinal sins of giving; most presents
are offered to please not the recipient but the giver. Half the time,
the Collected Poems of Ezra Pound are chosen to show that the giver is
an intellectual, not because the recipient might actually enjoy them.
The situation is happily reversed if it is the recipient who is
struggling to prove his intellectual status—then the book becomes a
compliment, where Valley of the Dolls would have been an insult. This
is particularly true with very good-looking girls, who always want to
be taken seriously for their intellect .Even in the delightful business of buying presents for children, the
object often reflects the donor's own desires—the football from the
frustrated athlete, the telescope as a gentle push toward
studiousness—rather than an understanding of the child's inner world.
Not that entering this world is easy; and, oddly, it gets harder as
children grow older. The blight of depersonalization sets in with the
increasing inclination of teen-agers to ask for and receive plain
money. Explains one Boston 17-year-old, who insists on cold cash: “If
they buy it, it's always wrong.”As for giving between husband and wife, that is virtually an index of
the success of a marriage. Only in the closest of unions would a
husband succeed in buying the right kind of antique Wedgwood vase; and
if he knows the correct size for a half-slip, he almost knows too much.
On the other hand, it takes more than love—profound intuition and
knowledge of character—for a wife to choose the right necktie for her
husband. In marital giving, moveover, there is a subtle language: the
pingpong table as a gentle hint to the husband who does not spend
enough time with his family; the overly luxurious gift from a straying
husband trying to assuage his guilt.
