To Gift Or Not To Gift?, Brunch - THE BUSINESS TIMES

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... shopping. Carts are a-filling and tills a-ringing as consumers everywhere get caught up in the tidal waves of buying - sorry, gift-giving - that mark this time of year. We won't deny that there's beauty and value in generosity of spirit, and much joy in receiving a well-chosen gift.

But let's not forget there is a real cost to festive spending, in both the carbon footprint of goods transported long distance just for 'the season', and the wastage in unwanted or unneeded stuff. In this special Christmas Brunch, BT editors Joan Ng and Tee Zhuo debate what Christmas brings, and what it should be.

Don't begrudge me the joy of gifting and receiving

By Joan Ng

THIS year, the Christmas gift I bought for my husband cost me S$100 in shipping fees alone. Snarls along the global logistics supply chain have jacked the cost of both air and sea freight up. And many consumers are - like me - spending their annual vacation money on lavish goods instead.

Payment platform Mastercard said in September that it expects this year to be one of the best holiday seasons on record. Over what it calls the "75 days of Christmas", covering the period up to Dec 24, Mastercard expects retail sales in the United States (excluding vehicles and fuel) to grow 6.8 per cent year on year and 11 per cent over the same period of 2019.

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The thought of the fuel emissions from all those parcels flying across skies or crossing the seas, the shredded paper and cardboard boxes that will eventually end up in landfills, and the sheer wastefulness of buying family members bars of soap they will never use, is too much for my colleague Tee Zhuo.

My argument: Don't deny me the once-a-year rush I get from unveiling my carefully selected gifts to the carefully selected few who will receive them. And don't deny them their joy of getting such gifts either.

When is a gift, a gift?

The exchange of gifts is a ritual that exists, quite possibly, in every society. It has economic and social utility - signalling intentions, values and identities. French anthropologist Marcel Mauss, in his 1925 essay The Gift, labelled the gift a "social fact" with "magical" properties binding object, giver and recipient.

Further research into this magical power of gifts has also uncovered psychological attachments to physical objects. When researchers at the University of Nottingham's Mixed Reality Lab studied digital gifting, they found that study participants discounted the value of digital gifts because they are relatively easy to gift. The perceived convenience undermined "some of the most valued aspects of social gifting rituals", they said, including "purposefully selecting an object; personalising it by wrapping it; and thoughtfully giving it to the recipient".

Digital gifting also reduced the joy that recipients derived from receiving physical gifts: "appreciating the presentation of a gift; unwrapping it; reflecting back and reciprocating".

This study involving 25 participants can hardly be definitive, but it is difficult to read the responses of each individual and not identify with at least one of them in some way. They came from various ethnic and academic backgrounds, some were single and others attached, some lived with family while others lived alone, and they ranged in age from 20 to 49. But in all of them there was excitement in recalling a moment when they received a gift, and an emotional attachment to various objects they had received.

Dignity and meaning in gift-giving

Every year at Christmas, I meet a small group of friends for turkey dinner and a Secret Santa. We have kept this tradition up long enough that we each have a good idea of what our recipient is likely to enjoy.

All the same, I always experience a small thrill when I think I've particularly hit the mark in giving something that will be cherished. Last year was one of those years. I had drawn for my recipient an altruistic friend whose cause of the moment was the war in the Middle East. After spending 2 hours of a Saturday afternoon on my Chrome browser, I had nearly despaired of finding anything that would be more meaningful than a donation to his favourite charity in his name. Then I happened on Artisan & Fox.

Founded by Singaporean social entrepreneur Jaron Soh, the company sells a wide range of home goods, jewellery, and other fashion accessories made by artisans in developing countries.

The artisans it works with are guaranteed 50 per cent of all gross profits from every item sold, and the company also provides loans to artisans or pays for raw materials in advance. Their structure gave me some assurance of price transparency.

Rebecca Hughes, content manager at Artisan & Fox, said the company currently works with 11 countries, including Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Guatemala and Nepal. "Our focus is more on the artisans around the world who don't necessarily have the access to other markets around the world," said Hughes.

The company also recognises that people may have an affinity for certain countries they visited, Hughes said, or want to contribute to certain causes. Soh himself was inspired to start the company following an encounter with artisans in the Himalayas after the 2015 earthquake. And for my friend, I was able to buy a pair of lapis lazuli cufflinks made by a craftsman in Kabul.

There is dignity in what Artisan & Fox offers to its artisans.

"It's more about supporting craft traditions," said Hughes. Some of them have not been able to pursue their craft due to political turmoil. And this year, Covid-19 has temporarily halted tourism. Hughes said this has "completely dried up the crafts sector" and highlighted how tourism is not a sustainable source of income for many artisans.

An excuse, but a good one

In case you're wondering, I bought my husband a 12 Days of Christmas Calendar from English baked goods and confectionery brand Cartwright & Butler. The box, as tall as the drawer unit below my office desk, contains 12 mini drawers - each with a Christmassy treat. The cost of the shipping, which increased my outlay by 50 per cent, was unexpected.

As Cartwright & Butler does not ship directly to Singapore, I had to send the box to a parcel forwarding service in Slough, Berkshire. And in my excitement to acquire what I was sure was the perfect gift for him, I neglected to check the dimensions and estimate the cost.

I asked my husband if he would be willing to supply a quote for this story, and perhaps address my colleague Tee's approach to this holiday. His response: "I think Christmas is a good excuse to buy things for people who are important to you."

This is such a typical response from my husband, who considers shopping a legitimate hobby.

I am quite the opposite, and tend to spend most of the year convincing him why he shouldn't buy another pair of sneakers or a decorative sword to hang from the wall.

Around this time of the year, however, I tend to agree with him. For 364 days of the year, environmental gurus teach us to limit our carbon footprints by eating less, shopping less and generally consuming less. But for that 1 day of the year, nothing quite brings joy in the way that Christmas gifts do.

[email protected] @JoanNgBT

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You don't need to buy, to give

By Tee Zhuo

WHAT is the meaning of Christmas? Not being a Christian myself, I must confess the festival means little to me beyond making a mental note to avoid certain sections of Orchard Road during the 2 weeks leading up to Dec 25, and a vague fondness for Mariah Carey's dulcet tones.

In recent years, however, those 2 weeks have sometimes stretched to 3, then a whole month... and now it is no longer surprising to find department store shelves lined with holiday hampers even in November. After all, what's not to love about more joy, right? But this phenomenon is not so much the infectious spreading of cheer, but a symptom of something more insidious.

The cost of Christmas

The occurrence I've just described is known as "Christmas creep", where merchants elongate the shopping period to fully exploit the loosening of purse strings accompanying holiday exuberance. Christmas hardly has a unique claim on this phenomenon; anyone who's witnessed the ever earlier "early bird" discounts on mooncakes will know what I'm talking about.

I'm not trying to police "correct" periods to celebrate festivals, nor am I a Christmas grinch, a picture my colleague Joan Ng will doubtlessly be painting in her opposing essay. But it is a fact that the cost of Christmas - in all senses of the term - has become very high.

First, the cost to the environment. One study estimates that the UK alone uses more than 365,000 km of wrapping paper each Christmas, or "enough to wrap around the equator 9 times". The country also sends about a billion Christmas cards (about 33 million trees' worth of paper), most of which end up in the bin.

And then of course, there are the gifts themselves. Typical of fast fashion, 2 in 5 of over 10 million Christmas sweaters Britons buy will be worn only once. These environmental costs somewhat tarnish the festive shine of the season.

But the issue isn't so much that not shipping an extra present will prevent us from tipping over into climate calamity (especially not when placed next to the millions of barrels of petrochemicals that flow through Jurong Island each week).

It is about spreading norms to other consumers and speaking to corporations in the only language they understand - cost and benefit, demand and supply. From that perspective, Christmas, among the most widely celebrated holidays globally, is strategically also the best time to question spending and gift-giving.

Capitalism corrupts

Perhaps for some, global warming seems a bit cold as motives go to stop the buying.

For Christians, giving gifts point to the more metaphysical gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. The 3 Magi said to have visited the newborn Jesus also brought gifts of important symbolic and cultural value - frankincense, myrrh and gold.

Even beyond the religious, as Joan points out, I'm fighting against a far more universal ritual as old as human society itself. She references the French social theorist Marcel Mauss, who outlined widespread gift-giving cultures. Family heirlooms strengthen legacy. Certain objects can confer respect and power. Keepsakes convey love.

Mauss however, was studying gift-giving in societies he termed "primitive", which differ from today's societies in important ways.

Most shared a far more sustainable, if not reverent, relationship with nature - wisdom which seems to escape our supposedly more advanced societies.

Relatedly, what once were intrapersonal, localised rituals have today warped into an orgy of consumption at a breathtaking scale.

A Deloitte study estimates that holiday sales this year will increase up to 9 per cent to US$1.3 trillion in the United States - more than Indonesia's gross domestic product. My colleague Joan herself laments paying S$100 in shipping fees, half the price of the gift itself, and cites Mastercard's prediction that retail sales will grow even more this year over the "75 days of Christmas".

Yet all this money is (presumably) freely spent and taken, so what's the problem?

The problem is exactly that - money.

While Mauss pointed to the seemingly "magical" properties of a gift that bind the object, giver and recipient, today, the properties are no longer magical, but monetary.

We no longer create gifts (who has the time?), but buy them. We often do so from large department stores or retailers, which in turn procure them, mass-produced, from factories. Now, with e-commerce, we don't even have to touch the gift to buy and give it.

As we grow increasingly alienated from the means and labour that produces our gifts, how and why we exchange them have also changed.

We increasingly judge gifts not by any inherent personal or cultural meaning, but by perceived monetary value. These, in turn, warp the reciprocity described by Mauss; the "debt" is not to the person, but quite literally a financial one: "Now I must give something of equivalent or higher value."

The ubiquity of ready-made gifts has also made it impolite not to give, even to casual acquaintances or just for a workplace Secret Santa. These gifts are often impersonal and generic - a sweater, perfunctory greeting card, a box of chocolates, pre-packaged hampers.

Put simply, capitalism - as it so often does - has corrupted gift-giving by replacing ritual with pure transactions. Gifts have been disenchanted, their magic stripped away, and replaced by money.

Buy less, give more

So what's the answer? What kind of gifts should we be buying? Well, my answer is: don't. Let me clarify that: we have to dissociate the idea of buying, from giving.

One example is the Buy Nothing Project. Centred around the idea of a true gift economy, it is an anti-consumerist initiative that emphasises building local communities that - as the name suggests - don't buy but instead exchange what they already have.

If you have to buy, rather than making Christmas merry for Amazon or Lazada executives, why not buy locally and avoid shipping costs (both financial and environmental) while regaining a closer relationship with your gifts?

Or, you could ask potential gift-buyers to donate to your favourite charity instead. While the myth of Santa Claus has been thoroughly co-opted by the retail sector to guilt parents into buying toys for their kids, his more spiritual predecessor Saint Nicholas was known for redistributing his own parents' wealth.

Another way to buy less but give more is to focus on quality, not quantity. Just as not all 1,000 of your LinkedIn and Facebook friends are really "friends", chances are your Christmas gift list needs some trimming. Instead of rushing to tick people off a long list, spread the same amount of time among less to think of more meaningful gifts for those you're closest to.

The idea that gifts are a "test" of how well you know a person is a toxic one that adds to generating unnecessary waste and encouraging the purchase of pricey "necessities".

Finally, the greatest gifts are often intangible. Though not a Christian myself, I have been fortunate enough to be warmly invited by Christian friends to their church's Christmas services, or to join potluck dinners at their homes.

Most tangible presents pale in comparison with joyful time spent with loved ones, a commodity already made scarce by the demands of work and more sharply outlined by the pandemic's restrictions.

As I write this, it is Dec 21, or Dongzhi, the annual winter solstice festival, which always falls just a few days before Christmas. Celebrated by Chinese all over the world, it is a time where families gather over bowls of hot tangyuan (filled glutinous rice balls) in sweet soup.

And that's something else many cultures also share, beyond gift-giving - a seasonal festival to drive away darkness and cold with shared warmth, connection, and the joy of reunion. In the end, isn't that the spirit of Christmas as well?

[email protected] @TeeZhuoBT