I'm Feeling the Christmas Spirit

And the retailers are drawing me to the buy-hole.

Consider Christmas Giving—though it can hardly be called giving in any traditional sense of the word—is the essence of this secularized festival of consumption. What is given is usually of low utility. In fact, economists call such objects deadweight gifts. “Deadweight” is short for “deadweight loss,” which is the difference between what a gift giver has spent and the value the recipient places on it. Joel Waldfogel, a Yale economist, has estimated that up to a third of the gifts given during Christmas are in this category. Billions of dollars are “wasted” each Christmas as Uncle Louie receives an unwearable Countess Mara necktie from his niece to whom he has sent an unusable Fendi purse. Both parties would be better off giving cash. But they don’t and that is what makes the transaction so interesting to economists and students of luxury.

Living It Up : America's Love Affair with Luxury
by James B. Twitchell