Siding with Scrooge

Obligations to reciprocate can be onerous, as Mauss notes by quoting a 12th-century Icelandic poem: “The miser always fears presents.” Failure to engage in gift giving can be hazardous, however. Among Polynesian tribes that Mauss studied, “to refuse to give . . . [or] to accept is tantamount to declaring war; it is to reject the bond of alliance and commonality.”

To find a more congenial view of gift giving, we can go further back, to Aristotle (who wrote in The Politics, “There is the greatest pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends or guests or companions”) or to the Bible, a version of which, believe it or not, is featured here. Experience informs us that a Money magazine writer was right when he wrote: “Seeing someone react with honest pleasure to a perfectly chosen present is, as the ads say, priceless.”

And there is such a thing as a perfectly chosen present. Gifts can represent a gain in social welfare, valued by the recipient at more than their retail price.

One of my favorite presents ever came from my daughter, when she was four years old and learning to write phonetically. It is a crayon drawing of a smiling, long-armed character reaching for a square covered in tiny circles—representing, it turned out, a typewriter. Lettering at the top read: JAYETITRUVMAGZEN. (Think like a four-year-old. Sound it out.) Better than frankincense, and as efficient as any Yale economist.