Christmas Shopping: A Benign Perspective

Gift-giving may be good, but I don't miss being
"Secret Santa" at the office Christmas party. (hrleader)

Economics can explain much of human behavior, but UC-Berkeley psychology professor Alison Gopnik says it doesn't explain altruism. (There's a school of thought that posits altruistic behavior is built into our genes; in my view that "science" isn't useful because it's not predictive, but that's another discussion.) [bold added]

the foundational idea behind economic and political theory, and much moral psychology and philosophy too, is the social contract. On this view, I am an individual agent with goals I want to achieve and resources I can use to achieve them. So are you. By agreeing to swap some of our resources we can both do better than we would on our own. Markets and democracies, the great inventions of the Enlightenment, help to scale up those social contracts to include millions of people at once.

Caregiving, on the other hand, is at the heart of many different religious traditions. Agape and caritas, the Greek and Latin terms for unconditional love, are central to the Christian tradition, as chesed or loving-kindness is in Judaism...

Understanding caregiving better might help us to explain gift-giving; Christmas shopping might be a spiritual practice as much as an economic transaction. Caregiving doesn’t fit the social-contract picture. It’s profoundly and intrinsically altruistic. When I take care of my children or my aging parents I don’t expect anything in return. Even professional caregivers like child-care workers and home-health aides will tell you that they do the work despite being underpaid because it’s so satisfying to take care of people who need you.

I'm feeling less grinchy about gift-shopping and gift-giving now that Prof. Gopnik says that those activities spring from unconditional love(!). Just remember that the shopping mall still isn't a substitute for a temple of worship.