GIFT-GIVING is a minefield. Weddings and birthdays, Christmas and christenings – they all require a degree of thought and a dollop of cash. Finding something that you like that they’ll like too, is just part of the problem.
A fine balance must be struck. Too small an offering and you risk being churlish. Go the other way and you simply cause embarrassment.
It’s not much easier being on the receiving end either. How many of us actually ask for what we’d really like?
Politeness, guilt or just a general sense that you’d rather buy it yourself, are the usual barriers. “Oh, anything at all… just something small… don’t go to any trouble.”
Things are much easier when you’re a child. No such inhibitions exist. You make a list, usually a long one at Christmas, and the rest of the year just keep asking and asking.
Looking back to my own childhood, the best presents weren’t even the flashy ones that everyone else wanted too – I still fondly remember my swing with the bright yellow seat – but these days kids must be running out of requests. What self-respecting five year-old doesn’t own a trampoline, a DVD player and an iPad?
Yes, things have moved on in the gifts and toy department and friends tell me it’s hard to say no when the motorised ride-on car they really, really want is something you too would have loved as a child. Yup, making dreams come true is an expensive, guilt-ridden business and it’s not always good to get, get, get.
Just ask unlikely parenting guru Sir Elton John. The 65-year-old revealed this week that it took four hours to open all the presents his adopted son was given on his first birthday. He described the deluge of gifts from well-wishers as touching but “obscene” and said he’d given most of them away to schools and hospitals.
Now Sir Elton, who is worth an estimated £220 million, is known for his love of the high life. A few years back he reportedly got through £30m in just two years, spending almost £300,000 on flowers alone, but even he baulked at the riches lavished on little Zachary. Of course, it should be recorded that however much Elton may have spent on trinkets and lavish parties, he also gives millions to charity every year. And he’s not the first rich man, or father come to that, to worry about spoiling his kids.
But the point he makes about excess, about it all just looking and feeling too much, is an interesting one. What he’s put his sequin-clad finger on is that material possessions rarely make us – or children – happy in the long-term.
So, if ripping open a few presents every now and then isn’t the answer, what does make us happy? Well, for the past couple of years the UK government has published the results of a national happiness survey, conducted by the Office for National Statistics. It came about after David Cameron announced it was time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general well-being.
Last year ONS asked 80,000 people four questions – how satisfied they were with their lives, to what extent their lives were worthwhile, how happy they were the day before they completed the survey, and how anxious they felt. All pretty standard stuff and not a single mention of money. Three-quarters of those asked gave themselves seven out of ten on a scale of well-being.
Talk to kids, of course, and things are even more interesting. They get their own survey and rate their happiness, on average, at eight and a half out of ten.
The under-16s also put playing with friends and spending time with family right at the top of their list. Birthdays and Christmas (yes, presents) inevitably make the happiness top five but it’s good to know that “doing something nice for someone” also makes the final cut.
It seems, therefore, that we are not all raving materialists. Proof of that came this week when the actor Sir Michael Caine told us he’d swapped his Rolls Royce for a more modest saloon. He said he wasn’t comfortable being “all showy” when so many people were struggling to make ends meet.
Maybe it was a present he didn’t really want.