Worrisome Excess in Gift-Giving on Traditional Holidays
Recent few days saw the celebration of two major Asian holidays of the fall: the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節) in the Chinese-speaking world plus Vietnam, and Chuseok (추석) in Korea. Essentially, both traditional holidays calls for temporary reunion of families to celebrate good harvest and share the bounties of the land in the form of traditional food. It is a time to return home, both to visit the tombs of clan ancestors and to meet with families, relatives, and childhood friends. As people become more mobile in the developed societies, the visits during these holidays are bound to be one of very few during the year.
And to make the visits more meaningful, people are bound to bring some gifts for each other, traditionally as signs of sharing the harvests with neighbors and extended families. Logically enough, traditional foods are the mainstays of such gifts, but in recent years, their contents have become increasingly lavish. From "specially decorated" mooncakes worth hundreds of dollars, to expensive alcohols, the fall gift-giving season has become a major marketing campaign and revenue earning period for food companies.
And crazily enough, often "specially decorated" has become closely associated with "not actually edible." The gift receiver simply feels too mentally discomforting to take a bite when they notice how the foods have caviar inside and too timid to take a sip when the drinks have little pieces of gold floating inside. They are haunted by the fact that such gifts are just too valuable to be consumed outright. Instead, without opening up the packages, they give away gifts they received to the people to whom they "must" give gifts.
Luckily, there are plenty of people to give gifts. Not to mention every member of the extended family down to the newborn third cousin, gifts are somehow "required" for every single significant acquaintance that one keeps in (even infrequent) contact with and for the children, even for the acquaintances of the parents who are too poor to buy gifts themselves. The number and scope of potential gift recipients would exceed those of whom a family would need to send cards on Christmas and/or New Years.
So, what ensues in a frantic exchange of gifts across one's entire social circle. Yet, as one notice the lavish gift received from Person A (which one promptly pass off to Person B), one also realize the need to "one up" Person A's gift when one is offering Person A a gift in return. The quiet competition for who gets more face mandates one to offer a counter-gift greater in value than what one received. The social demands for "one up"-ing quickly push up the financial costs of the gift-exchange process.
The food companies are only too happy to accommodate such competition for "face." In addition to significant effort to brand their products as high quality, they have been stepping up their game with product design and addition of "extra benefits" within the products. Packaging of products have been revamped to give off an aristocratic air even from the outside (not to mention the inside). And the extras that come with the products have become even more expensive than the products themselves in certain cases (two-decade-old red wine with mooncakes, anyone?).
While the food companies, domestic consumption figures, and "face" benefit from such vain exercises in holiday showing off, ultimately the benefits cannot possibly be matched by the damaging hit taken by the wallets. As some people become more financially well-off with each passing year and decide to make it publicly known through the latest fad in holiday gift, others with less financial capacity are forced to keep up. The financial burden is becoming so great for some that they are avoiding home visits altogether.
So in the time of family unity, forced spending on expensive gifts, most of which one simply give away again, is destroying the traditional meaning of the holidays. Of course, giving a few gifts to the most intimate families and friends will bring people closer together, but self-promotion through excess materialism will just serve to alienate. People complain that school reunions in Western cultures are exercises of narcissism; can we at least try to not make traditional Asian holidays to go the same direction?
And to make the visits more meaningful, people are bound to bring some gifts for each other, traditionally as signs of sharing the harvests with neighbors and extended families. Logically enough, traditional foods are the mainstays of such gifts, but in recent years, their contents have become increasingly lavish. From "specially decorated" mooncakes worth hundreds of dollars, to expensive alcohols, the fall gift-giving season has become a major marketing campaign and revenue earning period for food companies.
And crazily enough, often "specially decorated" has become closely associated with "not actually edible." The gift receiver simply feels too mentally discomforting to take a bite when they notice how the foods have caviar inside and too timid to take a sip when the drinks have little pieces of gold floating inside. They are haunted by the fact that such gifts are just too valuable to be consumed outright. Instead, without opening up the packages, they give away gifts they received to the people to whom they "must" give gifts.
Luckily, there are plenty of people to give gifts. Not to mention every member of the extended family down to the newborn third cousin, gifts are somehow "required" for every single significant acquaintance that one keeps in (even infrequent) contact with and for the children, even for the acquaintances of the parents who are too poor to buy gifts themselves. The number and scope of potential gift recipients would exceed those of whom a family would need to send cards on Christmas and/or New Years.
So, what ensues in a frantic exchange of gifts across one's entire social circle. Yet, as one notice the lavish gift received from Person A (which one promptly pass off to Person B), one also realize the need to "one up" Person A's gift when one is offering Person A a gift in return. The quiet competition for who gets more face mandates one to offer a counter-gift greater in value than what one received. The social demands for "one up"-ing quickly push up the financial costs of the gift-exchange process.
The food companies are only too happy to accommodate such competition for "face." In addition to significant effort to brand their products as high quality, they have been stepping up their game with product design and addition of "extra benefits" within the products. Packaging of products have been revamped to give off an aristocratic air even from the outside (not to mention the inside). And the extras that come with the products have become even more expensive than the products themselves in certain cases (two-decade-old red wine with mooncakes, anyone?).
While the food companies, domestic consumption figures, and "face" benefit from such vain exercises in holiday showing off, ultimately the benefits cannot possibly be matched by the damaging hit taken by the wallets. As some people become more financially well-off with each passing year and decide to make it publicly known through the latest fad in holiday gift, others with less financial capacity are forced to keep up. The financial burden is becoming so great for some that they are avoiding home visits altogether.
So in the time of family unity, forced spending on expensive gifts, most of which one simply give away again, is destroying the traditional meaning of the holidays. Of course, giving a few gifts to the most intimate families and friends will bring people closer together, but self-promotion through excess materialism will just serve to alienate. People complain that school reunions in Western cultures are exercises of narcissism; can we at least try to not make traditional Asian holidays to go the same direction?
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