Virginia Postrel on yet another way

giving is better than receiving:

As Cheryl Strayed writes in a terrific essay in the December issue of Allure:

Receiving sometimes hurts. Bad gifts tell us not who we are, but who the gift givers wish we would be—thinner, say, or a Japanese capitalist rather than an aspiring writer. Or, perhaps worse, they imply that we mean so little to the gift giver that he or she didn’t even bother to consider what we might like or need. That’s how it felt to receive soda for Christmas.