Admittedly, I have a strange relationship to giving gifts. Mostly, I found the obligatory nature and the related accounting pretty off-putting.

My wife on the other hand is a gifted and passionate gift-giver. So she’s picking up those duties for all our common friends.

I don’t mean to say that I never give gifts. But I tend to give things that I would kind of like to get myself.

As the topic came up today, I wanted to get a sense for how gift-giving works across cultures, and a bit about its history. In particular, I was interested to compare whether, or in which cultures, the gift is to be unwrapped with the giver present, or that is to be avoided.

What’s interesting is that based on the quick research I conducted there is roughly an equal distribution in this regard. In some cultures – mostly Asian – the gift is not opened in the presence of the giver, so as to avoid any embarrassment or loss of face. In many other cultures the gift is to be opened with the giver to explicitly witness the recipient’s reaction.

It seems there is the terms “cultural paradox” or “cultural contradiction” for the situation where the same reason is used to support two diametrically opposed reactions. In the context of gift-giving, for both cases, the underlying reason is to show respect and appreciation, but the manifesting behavioral norm is opposite.