The rules for the perfect gift

Every gift, whether planned or spontaneous, is full of symbolic meaning, memories or promises, can convey emotions and feelings, and has a single purpose: to offer joy to the recipient. Or at least that is how it should be. Because in reality, things – spoiled by an unwritten but unrelenting label that establishes occasions, value, mode, even type – go a little differently.

In America, home of the art of giftgiving,commentators and hotshot bloggers are now producing hilarious pieces not so much on the art of giving as on the art of surviving the duty of giving and the feelings of inferiority and inadequacy or worse social blame that might result from a gift not living up to the hype.

At the center of the debate, at a time of crisis and widespread economic insecurity, are gifts bought only “out of obligation,” from children’s party bags, mostly filled with useless junk, to Christmas gifts remedied at the last moment after a frantic search on Amazon; not to mention gifts designed for friends of a certain age, “who now have everything,” and who, in their quest for originality at all costs, border on reckless futility.

Actually, now as in past decades, the perfect gift is the result of the very few rules mentioned at the beginning. A successful gift is always the result of sincere attention to the recipient, not personal gratification; it is a spontaneous sign of affection, expecting nothing in return; it has symbolic meaning and speaks of shared moments and emotions.

Here’s that the upcoming end-of-year holidays could be a great occasion for jewelry, precious and durable by nature, the result of ancient Iavorations, creativity, passion: a small masterpiece to always carry with you, which knows how to move and amaze. This is well known by Jude Law who gave his then fiancée Sienna Miller, a singer as well as an actress, a piano that concealed a splendid diamond and sapphire ring inside. And Audrey Hepburn of Breakfast at Tiffany’s knew it very well when she quizzed with a hint of cynicism, “A man is judged by the earrings he gives you.”