“Rule Enforcement Without Visible Means: Christmas Gift Giving in Middletown”, 1984-05-01 ():
As part of a much larger study of social change in Middletown (Muncie, Indiana), a random sample of adult residents was interviewed early in 1979 about celebrations of the previous Christmas. This paper describes the unwritten and largely unrecognized rules that regulate Christmas gift giving and associated rituals in this community and the effective enforcement of those rules without visible means. A theoretical explanation is proposed.
The Middletown III study is a systematic replication of the well-known study of a Midwestern industrial city conducted by Robert and Helen Lynd in the 1920s (Lynd & Lynd [192995ya] 1959) and partially replicated by them in the 1930s (Lynd & Lynd [193787ya] 1963). The fieldwork for Middletown III was conducted in 1976–79; its results have been reported in Middletown Families ( et al 1982 [Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change and Continuity]) and in 38 published papers by various authors; additional volumes and papers are in preparation. Nearly all this material is an assessment of the social changes that occurred between the 1920s and the 1970s in this one community, which is, so far, the only place in the United States that provides such long-term comprehensive sociological data. The Middletown III research focused on those aspects of social structure described by the Lynds in order to use the opportunities for longitudinal comparison their data afforded, but there was one important exception. The Lynds had given little attention to the annual cycle of religious-civic-family festivals (there were only 2 inconsequential references to Christmas in Middletown and none at all to Thanksgiving or Easter), but we found this cycle too important to ignore. The celebration of Christmas, the high point of the cycle, mobilizes almost the entire population for several weeks, accounts for about 4% of its total annual expenditures, and takes precedence over ordinary forms of work and leisure.
In order to include this large phenomenon, we interviewed a random sample of 110 Middletown adults early in 1979 to discover how they and their families had celebrated Christmas in 1978. The survey included an inventory of all Christmas gifts given and received by these respondents. Although the sample included a few very isolated individuals, all of these had participated in Christmas giving in the previous year. The total number of gifts inventoried was 4,347, a mean of 39.5 per respondent. The distribution of this sample of gifts by type and value, by the age and sex of givers and receivers, and by gift-giving configurations has been reported elsewhere (1982).
The following were among the findings: (1) 4⁄5 Christmas gifts went to kin, and 4⁄5 of these to close kin. (2) 57% of all gifts were a part of a multiple gift, that is, 2 or more gifts from the same giver(s) to the same receiver(s), and 59% of all gifts were joint, that is, from more than one giver or to more than one receiver. (3) The proportion of each class of kin relationships marked by Christmas gifts and the value of those gifts were roughly proportionate to the close ness of the kin relationship. (4) Women were much more active as gift givers than men; they selected most of the gifts given jointly by couples, gave more gifts singly than men, and did nearly all of the gift wrapping. (5) Although married women were largely responsible for Christmas gift giving, they did not favor their own relatives over their husbands’. Gifts to maternal relatives did not differ substantially in number or value from gifts to paternal relatives. (6) In gift giving, close affinal [in-law] relatives were equated with the linking consanguineous relative. For example, gifts to daughters-in-law were as numerous and valuable as gifts to married sons. (7) The flow of gifts between adults and children was heavily unbalanced. The respondents, all adult, gave about 7× as many gifts to children as they received in return. (8) Residential distance, which has a major effect on most forms of contact between kin, has only a minor influence on Christmas gift giving.
…Here are some typical gift-giving rules that are enforced effectively in Middletown without visible means of enforcement and indeed without any widespread awareness of their existence:
The Tree Rule:
Married couples with children of any age should put up Christmas trees in their homes. Unmarried persons with no living children should not put up Christmas trees. Unmarried parents (widowed, divorced, or adoptive) may put up trees but are not required to do so
Conformity with the Tree Rule in our survey sample may be fairly described as spectacular. Table 1 shows the distribution of Christmas trees by family situation in our respondents’ households. Of the 45 married respondents with children under 18, only 2 had no tree. One was a newly married woman who had spent the entire Christmas season with her husband’s parents in another state. The other was a recent immigrant from Venezuela who omitted the tree to demonstrate her refusal to be assimilated: “We try to keep our own culture”, she told the interviewer in explaining why she and her husband had set up a nativity scene instead…Nobody in Middletown seems to be consciously aware of the norm that requires married couples with children of any age to put up a Christmas tree, yet the obligation is so compelling that, of the 77 respondents in this category who were at home for Christmas 1978, only one—the Venezuelan woman previously mentioned—failed to do so.
…The Wrapping Rule
Christmas gifts must be wrapped before they are presented.
A subsidiary rule requires that the wrapping be appropriate, that is, emblematic, and another subsidiary rule says that wrapped gifts are appropriately displayed as a set but that unwrapped gifts should not be so displayed. Conformity with these rules is exceedingly high. An unwrapped object is so clearly excluded as a Christmas gift that Middletown people who wish to give something at that season without defining it as a Christmas gift have only to leave the object unwrapped. Difficult-to-wrap Christmas gifts, like a pony or a piano, are wrapped symbolically by adding a ribbon or bow or card and are hidden until presentation…Picture taking at Christmas gatherings is clearly a part of the ritual; photographs were taken at 65% of the recorded gatherings. In nearly all instances, the pile of wrapped gifts was photographed; and individual participants were photographed opening a gift, ideally at the moment of “surprise.” Although the pile of wrapped gifts is almost invariably photographed, a heap of unwrapped gifts is not a suitable subject for the Christmas photographer. Among the 366 gatherings we recorded, there was a single instance in which a participant, a small boy, was photographed with all his unwrapped gifts. To display unwrapped gifts as a set seems to invite the invidious comparison of gifts—and of the relationships they represent.
The Decoration Rule
Any room where Christmas gifts are distributed should be decorated by affixing Christmas emblems to the walls, the ceiling, or the furniture.
This is done even in nondomestic places, like offices or restaurant dining rooms, if gifts are to be distributed there. Conformity to this rule was perfect in our sample of 366 gatherings at which gifts were distributed, although, once again, the existence of the rule was not recognized by the people who obeyed it. The same lack of recognition applies to the interesting subsidiary rule that a Christmas tree should not be put up in an undecorated place, although a decorated place need not have a tree.
The Gathering Rule
Christmas gifts should be distributed at gatherings where every person gives and receives gifts.
Compliance with this rule is very high. More than 9⁄10ths of the 1,378 gifts our respondents received, and of the 2,969 they gave, were distributed in gatherings, more than 3⁄4ths of which were family gatherings.
The Dinner Rule
Family gatherings at which gifts are distributed include a “traditional Christmas dinner.”
This is a rule that participants in Middletown’s Christmas ritual may disregard if they wish, but it is no less interesting because compliance is only partial. Presumably, this rule acquired its elective character because the pattern of multiple gatherings described above requires many gatherings to be scheduled at odd hours when dinner either would be inappropriate or, if the dinner rule were inflexible, would require participants to overeat beyond the normal expectations of the season. However, 65% of the survey respondents had eaten at least one traditional Christmas dinner the previous year.
The Gift Selection Rules
A Christmas gift should (1) demonstrate the giver’s familiarity with the receiver’s preferences; (2) surprise the receiver, either by expressing more affection—measured by the esthetic or practical value of the gift—than the receiver might reasonably anticipate or more knowledge than the giver might reasonably be expected to have; (3) be scaled in economic value to the emotional value of the relationship.
The economic values of any giver’s gifts are supposed to be sufficiently scaled to the emotional values of relationships that, when they are opened in the bright glare of the family circle, the donor will not appear to have disregarded either the legitimate inequality of some relationships by, for example, giving a more valuable gift to a nephew than to a son, or the legitimate equality of other relationships by, for example, giving conspicuously unequal gifts to 2 sons.
Individuals participating in these rituals are not free to improvise their own scales of emotional value for relationships. The scale they are supposed to use, together with its permissible variations, is not written down anywhere but is thoroughly familiar to participants. From analysis of the gifts given and received by our survey respondents, we infer the following rules for scaling the emotional value of relationships.
The Scaling Rules
(1) A spousal relationship should be more valuable than any other for both husband and wife, but the husband may set a higher value on it than the wife. (2) A parent-child relationship should be less valuable than a spousal relationship but more valuable than any other relationship. The parent may set a higher value on it than the child does. (3) The spouse of a married close relative should be valued as much as the linking relative. (4) Parents with several children should value them equally throughout their lives. (5) Children with both parents still living, and still married to each other, may value them equally or may value their mothers somewhat more than their fathers. A married couple with 2 pairs of living, still-married parents should value each pair equally. Children of any age with divorced, separated, or remarried parents may value them unequally. (6) Siblings should be valued equally in childhood but not later. Adult siblings who live close by and are part of one’s active network should be equally valued, along with their respective spouses, but siblings who live farther away may be valued unequally. (7) Friends of either sex, aside from sexual partners treated as quasi-spouses, may be valued as much as siblings but should not be valued as much as spouses, parents, or children. (8) More distant relatives—like aunts or cousins—may be valued as much as siblings but should not be valued as much as spouses, parents, or children.
It is a formidable task to balance these ratios every year and to come up with a set of Christmas gifts that satisfies them. Small wonder that Middletown people complain that Christmas shopping is difficult and fatiguing. But although they complain, they persist in it year after year without interruption. People who are away from home for Christmas arrange in advance to have their gifts distributed to the usual receivers and to open their own gifts ceremoniously. People confined by severe illness delegate others to do shopping and wrapping. Although our random sample of Middletown adults included several socially isolated persons, even the single most isolated respondent happened to have an old friend with whom he exchanged expensive gifts.
…Money is an appropriate gift from senior to junior kin, but an inappropriate gift from junior to senior kin, regardless of the relative affluence of the parties. This is another rule which appears to be unknown to the people who obey it. Of 144 gifts of money given by persons in our sample to those in other generations, 94% went to junior kin, and of the 73 money gifts respondents received from persons in other generations, 93% were from senior kin.
…The Reciprocity Rule
Participants in this gift system should give (individually or jointly) at least one Christmas gift every year to their mothers, fathers, sons, daughters; to the current spouses of these persons; and to their own spouses.
By the operation of this rule, participants expect to receive at least one gift in return from each of these persons excepting infants. Conformity runs about 90% for each relationship separately and for the aggregate of all such relationships. Gifts to grandparents and grandchildren seem to be equally obligatory if these live in the. same community or nearby, but not at greater distances (see 1982, Table 6). Christmas gifts to siblings are not required. Only about 1⁄3rd of the 274 sibling relationships reported by the sample were marked by Christmas gifts. The proportion was no higher for siblings living close than for those farther away. However, gifts to siblings do call for a return gift; this obligation is seldom scanted. Gift giving to siblings’ children, and parents’ siblings and their respective spouses, appears to be entirely elective; fewer than half of these are reciprocated.
…Empirically, the gift giving between adults and children in our sample was highly unbalanced, in both quantity and value. Respondents gave 946 gifts to persons under 18 and received 145 in return; 89 of these were of substantial value and 6 of the return gifts were. In about 1⁄3rd of these relationships, no gift was returned to the adult either by the child or in the child’s name. In most of the remaining relationships, the child returned a single gift of token or modest value.