Assignment 3

Gift of the Year: the Non-Gift

Every year, as the holiday season draws close, many set out on a quest for the perfect Christmas gift. It is not impossible to find that one perfect item that is satisfactory both to give and receive, but for many it is certainly not an easy task. Unfortunately the campaign often ends in frustration, endless meandering through overcrowded shops and ultimately the bitter resignation to a dull and dishonest gift. One can only imagine how refreshing it would be if the perpetuation of this sad tradition was put to an end. The masses could with little to no effort elevate the “non-gift” to the deserved distinction of “Christmas gift of the year”, in a mocking act of glorious iconoclasm.

Unwanted and redundant gifts come in many shapes and sizes. One common example is the infamous box of chocolates, official last resort of the Christmas shopper. Impersonal and predictable, they not seldom end up stacked on top of each other in fearsome columns that tower above the tallest of Christmas trees, obscuring the faint glow of the Star of Bethlehem. Under said tree various other objects of disappointment often lie awaiting their ritual unwrapping. That supposedly clever tool that will end up buried in a kitchen drawer, never to be used, or that randomly selected book no one ever is going to read, they are all too familiar examples. The non-gift, or more precisely the practice of not buying gifts, could be a neat, time and money-saving alternative to all the mindless purchases of the holiday season.

For Christmas shopping is indeed time-consuming and often unnecessarily costly. The non-gift eliminates the boredom and frustration of wandering in noisy superstore aisles and the awkward insecurity of clutching at straws for suitable gifts. The non-gift also saves the time, effort and cost of countless extra trips to malls and shops; trips of which the outcome often is a gift destined to be unappreciated. Such a gift is commonly dealt with in two different ways. In the best of cases it is possible to make a contrived effort to have an unwanted item replaced after Christmas, usually requiring an additional trip to the shop. More often than not however, the less appreciated gifts are kept, in part due to laziness and in part for fear of being perceived as unsatisfied or ungrateful. And so people end up being in possession of things they neither want nor need and, wisely, would not spend money on themselves.

Many would probably argue that the non-gift is cheerless, unimaginative and a crime against one of the beloved holiday traditions. It is said that most people do not mind spending time and money on giving each other joy and happiness, which is the essence of celebrating Christmas. That must be acknowledged as true, for when those emotions are genuine and mutual the non-gift is perhaps not a very attractive alternative. But when joy and happiness are absent or as fake as a plastic Christmas tree any gift will be cheerless no matter how beautifully wrapped.

The non-gift is an alternative to all gifts we do not really want to buy and all gifts we wish we did not have to unwrap while putting on a smile. It is an alternative that wisely saves time and money for occasions when our impulses are honest and genuine. If we this year were to awaken, only a little, from the slumber of tradition we might just find the non-gift irresistible.