Scroogenomics, Why You Shouldn’t Buy. Presents For The Holidays, by Joel Waldfogel (audio book, 4 hours). Published 2009. On its face, this study of the economic value of gift giving seemed interesting. It wasn’t, or at least whatever interest was inherent in the work (and thesis) was vastly exceeded by over analysis. In short, this four hour reading could have accomplished as much in fewer than 10 minutes, and quite probably less. Basically, gift giving is an inefficient way to provide value to the the recipient, as measured against what gifts cost. Basically, recipients on average value a gift significantly less than its cost. The author does backflips to explain why people give gifts, including why they don’t give cash which is far for more likely to deliver value closer to the gift’s cost. After much analysis and excess verbiage, he recommends giving gift cards, with the predictable amount of unclaimed value going to charity. If ever there was a book that didn’t need to be written, this might be it. ( )

He's singing my song. I'm not sure it would sell anyone who isn't already convinced, but it is NOT about ignoring the holidays, but how to do them better, but chucking the chuck-able and having more time and money available for what is important to each person- not the same for everyone and doesn't need to be. ( )

Every Christmas for decades, our mother makes the same speech, which begins like this, “I know that some families go all out and spend big money on big presents, but we’re not one of those families… “ invariably, this is the point where someone will stop her because we’ve all heard the speech enough times that we know it by heart and honestly, there is no explanation necessary for the fact that there is not a brand new car in the driveway with a red bow on top. We have never been one of those families who shops until they drop or maxes out credit cards trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Oh we are not immune to occasional splurges, but our people are frugal by nature and in recent times, by necessity as well. For years, as our extended family grew, we tried all kinds of different ways to control the gift-giving costs. We drew names and each person bought one gift for one other person. I’ll be the first to openly admit that I find that system unsatisfying. All too often, the match-ups were awkward, with son-in-law #1 buying something for son-in-law #2, whom he barely knows and has little in common with and the “family gift” feels like anything but. At another point, the great plan was to set a price limit on all gifts in the family exchange, which might have been more efficient if we just sat around and exchanged twenty-dollar bills.

Examining Holiday Gift Giving from a purely economic standpoint, Joel Waldfogel’s book “Scroogenomics” backs up with statistical data, the sense that I’ve had for the last few years that all the cost and challenges and care we expend during the Season of Giving rarely delivers the joy we hope to impart. I wish I’d read this book when it came out in 2009. It would have saved me two full seasons of guilt, frustration and the kind of holiday stress that so many of us fall prey to year after year. Many words have been written (and you can be sure that there are many more to come) about how to avoid or address the Christmas Blues, but the ones in “Scroogenomics” are by far the most sensible, fact-based and reasonable ones I’ve read in ages. Perhaps ever.

This year, I have officially given up feeling ashamed or embarrassed about the fact that the focus of my holiday season will NOT be on gifts. My ability to buy things for the people I love is not a fair measure of my affection for them, just as some trinket or token is not the best expression of their fondness for me. Living focused on things, whether we are giving or getting them, robs us of that which matters most.. spending time with the people we love, making memories and building holiday traditions that are low on stress and high on long-term, emotional rewards. ( )

This felt a bit repetitive after a while but was built on a very interesting idea. I enjoyed the first half of the book more, where the stats and figures were presented over the second half that focussed more on conclusions. ( )