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I'll be honest: I've never been comfortable with gifts, whether it’s giving them or receiving them. I feel like gifts, once exchanged, create ties and those ties, in my experience, come with expectations.
Most of the time, I keep this opinion to myself. But every Lebaran, when the hampers start moving between offices and neighbors and extended family, and the THR (a customary holiday bonus, typically given as cash) conversations start, I feel it again. That gap between what gifting is supposed to mean and what it actually feels like.
There's a trend I've been noticing lately: People parading the gifts they received on Instagram stories, a close-up of a hamper bundled in golden ribbon and glossy packaging, the giver tagged, a thank-you written across the frame. It's a polite gesture to acknowledge the giver. But I can't help feeling a little iffy about it.
Before social media, gifts were more personal. Some traditions even prohibit recipients from opening a gift in public out of respect for the giver. It was a private affair. Things seem to be changing.
Is gifting becoming a public spectacle? Or has it always been one, and social media just gave it a bigger stage?
The nastar that started a cycle
Ina didn't think of herself as a gift-giver. But during the pandemic, with Lebaran approaching and no way to meet her friends in person, she made a batch of nastar (pineapple-filled cookies, a Lebaran staple) from scratch and sent them out. Gifts, she figured, fill in the absence.
"It started with cute products you see on social media," she says. "Gifting was a way to support small businesses or hobbies."
What she didn't anticipate was what came back. "Some of my friends gave me something quite substantial in return, like artworks and handicrafts," she says.
And then they posted about it: photos of the nastar on their Instagram stories, her tagged, their appreciation made public.
"It was very nice of them," she says. "
But it also pressured me to do the same for their gifts. I don't post that often, so this actually felt a bit strange."
Nobody asked her to post. Nobody asked her to match the value of what came back. But the pressure felt real. The nastar she gave sincerely had started a cycle she never intended.
Aren't gifts supposed to be voluntary, a brief moment of joy? And yet, sometimes it feels more like a debt. If a gift is not reciprocated in one way or another, guilt builds up. We've somehow violated an unspoken social norm.
An unpaid debt
It is not uncommon to feel indebted when we receive gifts.
The anthropologist Marcel Mauss, who studied gift exchange across cultures, said exactly that: Gifts are power. They maintain social relationships, foster solidarity and create hierarchy.
Gifts are never neutral. They always make us feel obligated to give something back. That's why it's never a simple exchange, even if the product is as generic as a cookie hamper.
During Lebaran, this dynamic runs at full intensity. The gifting isn't optional. It's structural, woven into the rhythm of the season and calibrated by social proximity and professional hierarchy.
Fifi, who prefers to give and receive personalized gifts, has watched obligation create awkward situations even when everyone involved has good intentions.
Her brother-in-law once received a substantial personal gift from a team member he led.
As the superior, he faced a conundrum. "Is the team member expecting something else? Is it right for him, as the leader, to receive it?" she says. "There was a lot of thought."
The gift was given out of sincerity, so out of respect for the giver, he accepted it, made clear he didn't want another gift next year, and treated the entire team to a restaurant. A graceful exit. But once a gift is given, a tie is established that maybe never really goes away. Because when the cycle becomes purely transactional, the gift stops being personal at all.
When packaging costs more than the product inside, when the Instagram tag matters as much as the gift itself, gifting becomes more like a performance, done out of social pressure and for public consumption, rather than something meant to be genuinely enjoyed.
Why we give
So if giving creates an inevitable cycle, how do we give back in a way that actually nurtures the relationship?
"Maybe it's giving them attention. Or time," says Ina.
"Why does a gift need to be just a symbol? Maybe we can give them something they actually need."
Ina grew up watching her parents debate how and when to give something back in return. Some traditions, like weddings or formal ceremonies, demand a similar nominal value as a form of fair social exchange.
But as individuals, we have more freedom in determining what that value looks like.
"These days, I just don't have the budget or time to prepare something personalized for all my friends. But I also think it doesn't need to be a product. Maybe our friend just needs our attention, our time. And that's what I'll give in return," she says.
"I'm no longer interested in giving something generic. I'd rather give my friends something special."
When that personal touch disappears, gifts feel like something people pick off the shelves. A last-minute thing.
But if no gift is ever truly free, if giving always creates a cycle, then maybe it shouldn't be an afterthought. A good gift can create a virtuous cycle. And who doesn't want that?
