Economists wrong – Christmas is good
It is customary at this time of year to read economists arguing some variation on the idea that Christmas is an “inefficient” holiday. This year, the dismal science’s torch is carried here in Canada by, among others, an article in Folio by Geoff McMaster.
The economists’ arguments are invariably based on Joel Waldfogel’s famous 1993 essay that describes Christmas as a “deadweight loss.” That is, the holiday is fundamentally inefficient because the money your aunt spent on that ugly sweater would have made you so much happier if she’d given you cash, so you could buy something you wanted.
Multiplied by the whole population, this supposedly amounts to a mountain of misspent dollars.
A model, as they say, is only as good as its assumptions.
This argument hinges on the assumption that the point of the holiday is to get gifts. As any anthropologist, such as myself, will tell you, economists have it backward: Christmas isn’t about receiving gifts; it’s about giving them.
Insofar as the point is to give, Christmas is a perfectly efficient holiday.
The thoughtful social scientist would swap the grinchy Waldfogel for the insightful Marcel Mauss, a French anthropologist who argued that giving — not receiving — gifts is a glue that holds together crucial social bonds. It creates obligation by making someone “owe you one,” it cements friendships by communicating care and commitment and it allows you to accumulate spiritual merit.
We all have a better self somewhere, buried deep, but there nonetheless. The traditions of Christmas generosity offer us a chance to unearth that kindly spirit and be our better selves.
Giving gifts sincerely, receiving them graciously and always being ready to reciprocate: these go right to the core of what it means to live together as a society. By focusing on the utilitarian side of Christmas and tallying up your pile of loot, something fundamentally human is lost.
Better to put down the calculator, then, and accept that that hideous cardigan is not just a present but a bond.
Of course, the Scrooges may disagree; reasonable people can come to different conclusions about the same facts. And it is true that your aunt spent far more on that ugly sweater than you would ever pay for it.
Still, I hope my argument might persuade at least a few economists to change their minds. But if they remain convinced I am wrong, I am generous enough to oblige by removing them from my Christmas list.
— Canadian Mike Callaghan is an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, U.K.