Tis the season to be jolly – and to give gifts. The tradition of giving gifts at Christmas goes back centuries. Because gift-giving and many other aspects of the Christmas season involve heightened economic activity, among both Christians and non-Christians, the holiday has become a significant event and a key sales period for retailers and businesses. So Christmas is way beyond a religious holiday and has been for some time.
When I was a kid, the marketing for Christmas never started until after Thanksgiving. Now, you start to see Christmas advertisements and marketing right after Halloween, and Thanksgiving has been transformed into a major “kick-off” of the Christmas blitz. This year, there were a number of “Black Friday” events where shoppers went crazy. The economic impact of Christmas is a factor that has grown steadily over the past few centuries in many regions of the world. In the United States, it has been calculated that a quarter of all personal spending takes place during the Christmas/holiday shopping season.
While I personally do not care for the over-commercialization of Christmas that has occurred during my lifetime, the idea of gift giving is something I do like. I just think we have taken it “over the top” as we Americans seem to do with a lot of things.
It seems like giving is a human characteristic. We like to give gifts to others – those we know and those we don’t – because we like to make those we know and love feel good and we want to help those who are less fortunate than we are. Research shows that generosity directly benefits the well-being of those who give too, so maybe to some extent we also give to make ourselves feel good.
Research seems to confirm that proposition. One study from the University of British Columbia shows that people who give are happier than those who don’t. Even donating as little as $5 helped people feel better. A University of Oregon study showed that giving activates the same pleasure centers of the brain as receiving. And people who leave money to charity in their wills live three years longer than those who don’t, according to a U.K. study. (Our TSCPA Accounting Education Foundation would be happy to help you extend your life if you have an interest!) Other studies show a correlation between generosity and popularity. The more generous participants received more gifts back from others. So being generous and giving helps bring happiness, longevity and popularity if you believe the research.
But maybe we really didn’t need to do all that research. We could have just remembered what the fellow the holiday is named after said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
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