The Perfect Gift

As the Christmas season quickly approaches we are constantly reminded, actually more like bombarded everywhere we go, that we should start buying gifts for our loved ones and friends. Christmas stuff started showing up shortly before Halloween and its has hit full force now that Thanksgiving has come and gone. Some people are good and have most of their shopping done, but I am one of those people who will be finishing my shopping until the day before Christmas. Not because I am a procrastinator per say, but because I have a hard time coming up with "the perfect gift."

There are people in my life where I give a gift because they are a friend and its a common courtesy if you will. But then there are others that I really want my gift to mean something. To show that I truly care and I put thought into what I want to give. To me it shows that I know the person, I know their likes and dislikes, etc.

Although the growing exchangeability and liquidity of gifts are appealing to many people, several scholars argue that it is exposing the increasingly transactional nature of gifts -- and slowly eroding the reasons people started exchanging gifts in the first place.

"The very idea of the soul of the gift has been lost," said Antonio Callari, an economics professor at Franklin and Marshall College, who is interested in the cultural and psychological aspects of gift-giving. "The gift has lost its character as a gift and become a product, a commodity."

The idea of the gift goes back centuries. But gifts don't mean the same thing today as they once did: For one thing, people have far more stuff than they used to, which makes getting a truly unique gift less likely. A lot more gifts also change hands these days, which makes it harder to put a great deal of thought into each gift.

At the end of the day, as long as thought and love go into your gift that is all that should truly matter right? Is there really such thing as the perfect gift?

To you, from me, with love