What are you giving me this for?
Why do people give each other presents on Christmas day? Of course, it’s because
They like you and want to make you happy, or just plain want to make you like them
for some reasons, but how did the actual tradition get started?
The tradition of gifts seems to have started with the gifts that the wise men (the
Magi) brought to Jesus. As recounted in the Bible’s book of Matthew : “on coming to
the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and
worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of
gold and of incense and of myrrh.”
However, on one was really in the habit of exchanging elaborate gifts until late in
the 1800s. The Santa Claus story, combined with an amazing retailing phenomenon
that has grown since the turn of the century, is really what has made gift giving a
central focus of the Christmas tradition.