THE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS GIFTS

The Meaning of Christmas Gifts

The Meaning of Christmas Gifts

Introduction

The sociology of buying Christmas gifts is now enjoying a renaissance of interest. In an earlier period of American sociology, particularly in the years immediately before and after World War II, buying Christmas gifts was pretty much ignored. While Christmas shoppers were mentioned in early community studies, few articles on buying Christmas gifts appeared in professional journals.

Discussion

Classical theorists were certainly not at fault; they left a rich heritage of sociological theory: (Farriss, 1986, 56-59) writing on fashion, Marx (Sammons, 2006, 68-71) on Christmas gift fetishism, Weber ([1922] 1959) on status groups, Veblen ([1899] 1953) on conspicuous consumption. Handbooks published up through the 1980s continued to discuss traditional sociological concerns related to politics, deviant behavior, and race relations. But buying Christmas gifts was not mentioned at all.

It is anybody's guess why Christmas shoppers were ignored by sociologists for so long. Possibly, buying Christmas gifts was considered to be the province of other academic domains—economics, for example, or retailing and marketing (Rosenthal, 2006, 51-58). Marxists and neo-Marxists saw societies organized around production, with consumption a distraction from the paramount concerns of capitalism. Others have speculated that production has been the perennial winner in the sociological agenda. Possibly too sociologists thought that consumption was frivolous. (Federer, 2002, 41-48) commented that Veblen's satirical attack on the new middle class actually blurred his understanding of conspicuous consumption.

Christmas gifts help locate the self in social and cultural space. The market supplies the cultural resources—the Christmas gifts essential to this process. At the same time, Christmas shopper goods are no panacea for the risks and uncertainties of the modern world (Rosenthal, 2006, 51-58). In contrast with older and more stable social orders, an uneasy tension exists between the construction of individualized identities and the market's supply of Christmas gifts. This tension—that the fit between identity and Christmas gift is never exact or completely right—is part of the meaning conveyed by (Bowler, 2007, 36-39) “reflexive project.”

Beyond their relevance for personal identity, Christmas gifts integrate individuals into collective life. In the tradition of Durkheimian sociology (Federer, 2002, 41-48), Christmas gifts reflect both distance and cohesion, separating “we” from “they.”

This is documented in the extensive literature on gift giving that updates the classic work on gifts and exchange. Gifts are exchanged according to prescribed rituals. In Bowler, (2007, 36-39) Middletown research, gift giving at Christmas is first and foremost a public occasion (Bowler, 2004, 23-29). Gifts are synchronized to suit the role relationships between givers and receivers.

Gifts identify the intimate circle of family and friends, but they can also be used to identify everyone else. This is possible because the social distance implied by gifts is more nuanced than the sharp binary distinction between “we” and “they.” In Middletown, intimacy is measured by the metric of the market economy: the more costly the gift, the more intimate the relationship. In this view, the variable cost of gifts distinguishes not only kin from nonkin but ...