A quick history lesson on gift-giving

We all love receiving and giving gifts, say for your significant other or the birthday of your best friend, but where does this tradition come from? Well… it’s certainly not new! We’ll catch you up in this blog post with a quick history lesson on the tradition of gift-giving.

As said: gift-giving is not something we just started doing in the modern ages. It goes back thousands of years, even going back as far as the caveman-era! And even further… our chimpanzee ancestors were known to give gifts to potential mates. What does this mean? Well, we can definitely say that gift-giving comes very natural to us.

Given that exchanging gifts has been a thing for humans for as long as we’ve existed, it’s not crazy that gift-giving comes back through all ages in history and across all cultures. While it began as cavemen giving simple gifts to prove they could provide, just like everything else in humans, this old tradition expanded.

Gift-giving became a tradition in all cultures, all with their own rules and sometimes even surrounded by their own ceremonies. For example, dowries to the family of the bride hundreds of years ago, or sacrificial ceremonies to the ancient gods.

Nowadays gift-giving thankfully is a lot less bloody than it was in the old days, but there are still traditions. Birthdays, for example, and how about Christmas and Valentine’s Day? These are all milestones to show your appreciation and/or create a sense of community with your loved ones. And the best gift is (in our opinion of course) one that is personalized for the person receiving. This gives a gift an extra layer: it shows that you put thought into it and that making the other person happy is important to you! And that is most of the time even more important than the actual gift.

Now a lot has changed throughout the ages if we’re talking about gift-giving. If you’re curious about where some of our most well-established traditions in gifting come from, we’ve put down a quick tour of gift-giving through the ages down below.

Caveman

Human civilization started out in the Caveman era, and the tradition of exchanging gifts comes from this period in time. It was a very important part of the caveman communities, especially for being respected, starting a family and establishing dominance. Leaders of tribes would give gifts to people who had accomplished something great for the tribe, this showed appreciation and rewarded and celebrated the accomplishment! Cavemen also gave gifts to display affection and to symbolize support and the ability to provide for a family. So you can see where romantic gifts nowadays actually come from!

Most given gifts were teeth and stones, these were very appreciated and could be cut into something special, such as necklaces or other wearables.  

The Ancient Ages of Rome, Greece and Egypt

The Ancient cultures of Rome, Greece and Egypt are a few of the most iconic old civilizations. These cultures were very developed and played an important role in our all over development as a species.

​We can thank the Ancient Egyptians for the tradition of gift-giving on birthdays! A pharaoh’s coronation day was considered more important than their actual day of birth, leading this day to become their ‘birthday’. This is because it was the day they were considered to have transformed into Gods and started a new life, making it very important for them and their civilization!

The day a Pharoah was coronated was considered the day of their birth, since this was the day they transformed into Gods and began a new life. On this day they were honoured with many gifts. Egyptians were also buried with many gifts in their tomb, as it was believed that gifts that were special to them in life would help them transition into their afterlife. Sometimes their pets were even buried with them!

Religion had a huge impact on the nature of gift-giving in Ancient Greece! Greeks believed evil spirits would come to haunt a loved one on their birthday, so they would present gifts to them to prevent these spirits from appearing.

Surprisingly this is also where the tradition of blowing out candles started, the Greeks would use their wish and the act of blowing out the candle to send a message to the Gods to protect the birthday girl or boy!

It was also custom in Ancient Greece to welcome passing travellers into your home with gifts, in case they were actually Gods in disguise.

In Ancient Rome there were also many religious traditions surrounding gifting! It was a tradition for the Emperors to receive a variety of gifts as the rules of the Empire during the festival of Saturnalia. The festival intended to honour the god Saturn and was held on the 17th December, later continuing through to 23rd December.

The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, gifts were often food-based and were intended to be a symbol of power. Gifting was often a diplomatic or business deal, or for religious purposes.

In the Middle Ages, there was also a rise in romantic gifts given from men to women, with men performing love songs to women to win their affection, or presenting them with garments.

Another unusual but common type of gift during the Middle Ages was dowry. Dowry was the gift of money, property, livestock or other valuables given by a man to his fiancee’s father, in exchange for his daughter’s hand in marriage! This gift was common courtesy in the Middle Ages and was a way in which a man could put a value on his potential spouse for approval from her father. This is also very logical if you know that marriages in the Middle Ages were often considered a political act to diplomatically connect two families, or sometimes even a deal between merchants.

The modern era

In the modern ages, much has changed, and at the same time, you can still see how many ancient traditions are still very much alive today. We still blow out candles, we still give romantic gifts to win affection or to celebrate an achievement that someone achieved. Gifting is in our DNA and is there to stay. If you’re looking for the perfect gift and in need of some inspiration, check out our giftwares!

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