<1> The word "gift" has got dangerously devalued of late. Salesmen use
so-called free
gifts as bait and publicists use them as bribes; the
wealthy can make "gifts" to their children, or to charities, with no
more noble motive than saving tax. And anything labelled a gift shop,
or catalogue, can generally be guaranteed to be full of curious, zany
items like personalised solid silver back-scratchers and musical
ashtrays, which are only classified as "giftware" because nobody in
their senses would buy them to use themselves. <2> We
need to
claim the word back this Christmas. We also need to
claim back the word "
generous": which too often gets used in the sense
of over-large portions of food, hotel towels, the size of sheets, or
women spilling out of their dresses. For
generosity--the ability to
make real gifts with modesty and love, expecting nothing back--is one
of the things which most make us human. You do not find pigs or lions
giving one another thoughtful little presents, do you? Monkeys,
apparently, offer one another fleas at times, but not in any provable
spirit of kindliness. We should honour generosity more than we do.