Presents
Christmas has always been a time to give and receive
presents. It all goes back to the gifts of gold, incense
and myrrh given to Jesus by the Wise Men. A few centuries
ago it was the custom for the rich to give gifts to
the poor. Wealthy householders were obliged to open
their homes to the local poor. It was also customary
to give your feudal lord a gift at Christmas to show
your loyalty
The tradition of children receiving gifts has grown
with the rise and rise of Santa, which we'll come back
to later. But more generally the giving of gifts has
been driven by the commercial pressures of Christmas.
We see more on sale, we want more and we expect more.
Long gone are the days when children were delighted
with a chocolate doll and an orange.
The first shop to see the commercial possibilities
of Christmas was Woolworth's which began to sell
Christmas as a time to spend, spend, spend as far back
as the end of the nineteenth century. At the beginning
of that century the main Christmas expenditure was had
been on food and drink but by 1900 shopping for presents
had become part of the Christmas ritual.
