Gift

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Template:Wiktionary This page is about gifts in the common English-language sense. For other uses, see Gift (disambiguation).

A gift or present is the transfer of money, goods, etc., without the direct compensation that is involved in trade, although possibly involving a social expectation of reciprocity, or a return in the form of prestige or power. In many human societies, the act of mutually exchanging gifts contributes to social cohesion. Economists have elaborated the economics of gift-giving into the notion of a gift economy.

By extension the term gift can refer to anything that makes the other more happy or less sad, especially as a favor, including forgiveness, and kindness (even when the other is not kind).

The background may be:

Someone has more than another
Something bad happened to another
Expression of love or friendship
Expression of gratitude for a gift received
Custom, on occasions (often celebrations) such as
- A birthday (the person who has his or her birthday gives cake, etc. and/or receives gifts)
- Father's Day (the father receives gifts)
- Mother's Day (the mother receives gifts)
- Christmas (people give each other gifts, often supposedly receiving them from Santa Claus)
- Saint Nicholas (people give each other gifts, often supposedly receiving them from Saint Nicholas)
- A wedding (the couple receives gifts and gives food and/or drinks at the wedding reception)
- A funeral (visitors bring flowers, the relatives of the deceased give food and/or drinks after the ceremonial part)
- A birth (the baby receives gifts)
- Passing an examination (the student receives gifts)
- Supplying food and/or drinks to someone invited in the home
- Giving a round of drinks in a bar.
- Lagniappe

A gift may either be an ordinary object or an object created for the express purpose of gift exchange, such as the armbands and necklaces in the Trobriand Islands' Kula exchange.

A gift can also be a special talent or ability that was not earned through the usual amount of long and difficult practice but instead comes easily to the recipient in a natural way. A person with such a gift is said to be "a natural" or "gifted" in that field of endeavor. A gift, in this sense, can be thought of as being given by God or by nature: a God-given or natural gift received by one at birth. For example, a fluent and entertaining speaker is said to have "the gift of gab".

Ritual sacrifices can be seen as return gifts to a deity. Sacrifice can also be seen as a gift from a deity: Lewis Hyde remarks in The Gift that Christianity considers the Incarnation and subsequent death of Jesus to be a "gift" to humankind, and that the Jākata contains a tale of the Buddha in his incarnation as the Wise Hare giving the ultimate alms by offering himself up as a meal for Sakka. (Hyde, 1983, 58-60)