The perils of gift-giving
Jane Bradley’s festive dilemma
Some indigenous groups in the US and Canada hold a competitive gift-giving process called a potlatch.
At the celebration of a major life event – births, deaths, weddings and so on – there is a massive gift exchange and distribution of wealth to such an extent that the practice was at one time considered to be a major lynchpin of the local economy. Most importantly, the more wealth that a family or tribe gave away, the more prestige was bestowed on them.
As the end of the Christmas school term approaches and the last day looms, I am reminded of the potlatch. Teaching friends tell me that gifts used to appear only at the end of the school year in June as a thank you for everything over the past nine months. But now, it has morphed into an every-term affair, each one more competitive and elaborate than the last. The conundrum has kept me awake at night this week. What is the etiquette for this class? Should I buy gifts? Should I not? I am sure that some parents in my child’s class are likely to indulge.
Therefore if I don’t, will my offspring be forever more blacklisted as ‘The Child Who Does Not Appreciate Her Teachers’? Then again, if others don’t buy and we do, we will look like some ridiculous, over-thetop brown-nosers.
And, in our particular case, if I do, how on earth am I practically going to do it? My child, for various reasons which I won’t bore you with here, is taught at our local state primary by no fewer than three different class teachers and at least four classroom assistants (on a jobshare arrangement), a weekly visiting French teacher, PE teacher and music teacher.