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Well I guess the politically correct answer to the question whether giving is better than receiving, is to say of course it is! But if I'm honest I find myself in the other camp. I am selfish and I like getting presents a whole lot more than I like spending money on others!

Now I guess that most people will now think I am selfish and thoroughly unpleasant, but the fact is, that we humans are only animals, and have you ever seen an animal (outside of a nursing Mother with her young), choose to give their food away to others? No - of course not - they keep it for themselves, - it is the first rule of survival, and we fellow simians are much the same.

In principal, we can say that we would rather spend our last pound on a bar of chocolate for a depressed colleague, rather than receive a similar gift from someone else, but in practice most of us prefer the joy of receiving, and have done since we were small children writing that letter to Father Christmas with a list of all those presents we want others to give to us.

I guess if money is no object, then it can give pleasure to buy gifts for those who desperately want something and can't afford to buy it for themselves, but, sadly, most of us are not in that situation. We work hard to pay the mortgage, feed our families, and hopefully, save something for that "rainy day", so spare money is not easy to come by. So therefore, when we do get that bit extra through working overtime or whatever, it is only human nature, to want to spend it on something we have wanted for ourselves for a long time, rather than giving it to others. And if someone actually comes along and gives us that gift so we can spend the hard-earned overtime money on something else - well I defy anyone to honestly say that giving something away is less pleasurable than receiving something.

In fact, there is something very depressing in spending our last penny on buying a gift for some ungrateful relative at Christmas, who will obviously not enjoy that gift, as much as we know we would have enjoyed spending the money on something for ourselves. So - call me Scrooge, but i can't help the way I feel. Receiving is far, FAR better than giving in my opinion!

Learn more about this author, Rose Conrad.
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