“It is more blessed togive than to receive,” according to the scriptures – but so many people will returndisappointing Christmas gifts to the store for an exchange or refund today thatJanuary 3 has sometimes been dubbed “National Returns Day.” While it maydeflate our ego to know that our gift choices do not bring our loved ones thepleasure we had hoped, there are economic, political, and spiritual truthsembedded in this unheralded holiday tradition.

Despite the secret guilt and implied ingratitude ofreturning gifts, the practice is widespread and growing across the West. Nearlyhalf (46percent) of all Americans will return unwanted Christmas gifts, accordingto Optoro, pany that tracks thisfigure annually. Of these, the average person returns fouritems. The value of exchanged merchandise is £143million in the UK alone;globally, that rises to $90 billion,and climbing.

StreameditorJay Richards captured the economic reality behind this in a touchingchildhood story about a game a teacher played in elementary school, whichyou can see summarized here.The bottom line is: The more choice a person has over a gift, the greater thesatisfaction. Economists call this “maximizing utility,” and expanded choiceincreases personal happiness.

Christmas gift returns also refute the notions of mand economics. If those closest to us, who know us personally, cannotalways choose gifts we might like, how can distant and anonymous centralplanners? As Friedrich Hayek pointed out, theirgrasp of the situation always amounts to plete and frequently contradictory knowledge” that, by itsnature, cannot tell bureaucrats “how to secure the best use of resources.”Even if they knew of the particularities facing every one of the nation’s 325million citizens, government administrators could not micromanage circumstancesto bring the same degree of enjoyment we can through millions of independentchoices. Economic centralization makes people less happy than the autonomy bestowedby economic freedom. Every returned shirt, tacky piece of jewelry, or unwanted kitchenappliance silently attests to the failure of socialism.

Finally, there is a spiritual sense pregnant even insomething as mundane as exchanging unwanted gifts. The Christmas seasonspecifically marks Jesus Christ’s nativity, in which the Savior took our humannature and our fallen faculties the ability mune with God. St. GregoryNazianzus said that through Christ’s incarnation, “the new was substituted for the old” and “each property ofHis, Who was above us, was interchanged with each of ours.”

“This is the reason for the generation [birth]and the virgin, for the manger and Bethlehem,” hecontinued, “to make Christ to dwell in the heart by the Spirit: and,in short, to deify, and bestow heavenly bliss upon” Christ’s followers (Oration 2, 24 and 22, respectively).

Thank God for this heavenly exchange.

(Photocredit: JJByers. This photo has been cropped. CC BY 2.0.)