It's almost December again and many of us are about to start our annual Christmas gift shopping. On the one hand, it's a gift rush, associated with overconsumption and materialism, a buy-and-throw-away culture of often impersonal mass-produced goods, which can seem strange from an economic and environmental perspective. Sustainability and environmental policy are guiding trends in the current debate, where we are encouraged to rethink our consumption and instead consider, for example, handmade gifts, charitable gifts, giving experiences or buying gifts recycled.
On the other hand, we should not reject the idea and tradition of giving each other gifts. Gifts are an important part of most people's social lives. We give gifts to those we are connected with to clarify the relationship, for example on birthdays, at Christmas, on memorial days, for dinners and hostess gifts. We give gifts to show love, respect or thanks and can thus be attributed great social significance. Anthropological studies highlight that gift-giving is fundamental to human community and can help express identity.
Because gifts are not just gifts - things are not just things, but can possess a form of spirit - a kind of inherent power. Material culture didactically we understand this aspect as human - thing - relationships that can link references to cultural backgrounds and form a bridge between past and present. In old inherited objects, an affective value can often be traced. A special attachment to a piece of jewelry, a piece of furniture, a tool, clothing - which can awaken memories of a bygone era or a dear deceased. The gift is therefore in a way animated by the giver, and this spirit remains in the object. Even if the gift is passed on in different contexts where it undergoes and changes in its journey from being a commodity, an object of use, to being a memory and having affective value - to becoming a commodity again. An item that you may be lucky enough to find at Zoll antiques - and give as a nicely wrapped gift.
Many anthropologists believe that by being wrapped, the product steps out of its role as a mere impersonal commodity - a material object of trade - and instead transforms into a personal gift or possession. A change that already begins in the purchasing process; in the atmosphere in the store, in the encounter with the clerk, in the time spent selecting.
Finding the right gift requires a special feeling - a fingerspitzgefuhl that many of us do not possess or prioritize time for. It can be a demanding discipline and is shrouded in many traditions and considerations that the giver must navigate. Kim from Zoll antiques says:
At Zoll Antiques we take great care to carefully select the items we offer for sale. We love items that have soul, a special aura, and provenance. Items that our customers can remember from their childhood. There is nothing better than when our customers come into the store and feel the history and adventure that many of the items in the store exude. When they buy, they take a small part of the adventure they have experienced in the store home with them, and it is worth it to see the satisfaction on our customers' faces when they leave the store with a gift we have wrapped, either for themselves or someone close to them.
Merry Christmas,
Blog by Stine Fausing @flairforfox
Sources: Bille & Flohr Sørensen chap. 5, Pauses for Thought: The Gift by Anders Klostergaard Petersen, professor at Aarhus University, Marcel Mauss, The Gift.