Commentary: Don’t waste your money on unwanted Christmas gifts

SINGAPORE: Christmas is peak gifting season, and for many, it is equal parts terrifying and exhausting.

The quest for the perfect gift, combined with the expectation of reciprocation, transforms the joyful season into a high-stakes “Guess What I Got You” game. Faking enthusiasm becomes an art, and the dread of finding space on the kitchen table for yet another quirky mug is a universal holiday struggle.

It is such a stressful time of the year that medical professionals have weighed in on ways to “survive the wrapping paper mayhem of gift giving and receiving and dig deep for some cheer and spirit” in an article on How To Shake Holiday Gift Anxiety on health information website WebMD.

Adding to this, a 2016 survey by financial services firm ING on The Truth About Unwanted Christmas Gifts suggests that not everyone is always grateful for the presents they receive. In Europe, around one in seven individuals said they were unhappy with the Christmas gift they received the previous year, and 10 per cent could not even recall what they received.

While the survey didn't cover Asia, counterparts in the United States and Australia reported comparable figures.

It is not unfair then to acknowledge that while Christmas represents many wonderful things - think joyful gatherings with loved ones and delicious holiday meals - it is also a time we will most definitely receive gifts that we already have, will not use, or are just not quite our cup of tea.

This leaves us with several options: Leave the gift at the back of some storage cupboard, dispose it in the trash, place it in a donation bin, or gasp, rewrap it and regift it to someone else.

UNPACKING REGIFTING

Just so we are on the same page, gifting is the act of giving someone an item without expecting anything in return. Regifting follows the same principle but with a twist - the item being given was originally received by the person who is now giving it away to someone else.

In a society that values the spanking new, regifting is a topic that is whispered in hushed tones. Is it a cost-effective, environmentally friendly method to reassign gifts we have chosen not to keep? Or is it a breach of social etiquette that detracts from the essence of gift-giving?

While the mechanics of regifting seem fairly straightforward, the psychology behind it is anything but.

A 2014 study in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour linked words such as guilty, lazy, thoughtless and disrespectful in describing feelings about regifting. For those of a certain age bracket (ahem!), you might even remember a notable Seinfeld episode dissing the practice of regifting.

Much of the social taboo surrounding regifting was due to “an asymmetry in beliefs about entitlement”, according to a separate study published in the Association for Psychological Science.

“Givers believed that the act of gift giving passed title to the gift on to receivers, so that receivers were free to decide what to do with the gift; in contrast, receivers believed that givers retained some say in how their gifts were used.”

Simply put, receivers hesitate to regift because they assume that the original giver would find it offensive. However, in most cases, givers were happy for the person they gave the gift to to do what they deemed best with the present, including regifting.

Normalising regifting, in their case through an imagined National Regifting Day, made the practice less of a taboo and aligned both the receiver’s and giver’s beliefs more closely. 

CULTURE OF GIVING AND THE SPIRIT OF GIVING

Singaporeans have consistently been adept at regifting; the Lion City came up tops in a 2014 Rakuten survey of 7,000 respondents across seven nations, with 45 per cent happy and willing to regift.

Does this mean the needle on regifting is clearly moving towards the yea side of things, and that regifting can help make the season more sustainable and less wasteful?  

We could draw a neat line under that and call it a day, but that would be missing the forest for the trees.

Consumers are spending more on their credit cards, and they are not always able to pay their bills fully.

According to credit and charge card statistics from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the rollover balance in the third quarter of this year was S$6.86 billion, an increase from S$5.78 billion in the same period last year and the highest amount since at least 2014.

In countries like the US, about 25 per cent of shoppers are still paying off holiday debt from 2022, according to WalletHub’s November holiday shopping survey.

And, after all that, to have billions of dollars wasted on unwanted gifts.

In fact, Americans waste more than US$10 billion on unwanted gifts every year, according to a report by finder.com. In Australia, Christmas gift waste is expected to exceed US$900 million, according to figures by the Australia Institute.

We are spending more, or spending money we cannot afford, to buy gifts we don’t get quite right. Are we okay with that because we have found ways to move the item about, so we feel we are managing waste?

Considering this, it is worth pondering whether regifting is just another superficial solution we adopt in the litany of things we do to infuse deeper meaning into a world swamped by consumerism.

I wonder if having circular conversations skirt the uncomfortable fact that we might just be overindulging in the relentless accumulation of things.

The old adage reminds us that it’s the thought that counts. The true spirit of giving, perhaps, lies not in the abundance of what we gift, receive or regift, but in the thoughtfulness of how we express our care for one another and our place in each other’s world.

And maybe, the greatest gift we can offer is to reduce our consumption, choose more mindfully, and redefine the culture of giving to one that values connection over collection, and where the measure of our gifting generosity is not in the material but in the meaningful.

Cherie Tseng is Chief Operations Officer at a local fintech company, a mother of three and editor with The Birthday Collective.