If you're a reader of magazines, you're well aware that there's an annual geyser of features written engaging the annual ritual of spending money on stuff that is then given to friends, relatives, business contacts and people we feel guilty about not spending any time with.

The question is a matter of summing up a very abstract thing (a relationship) in an often physical symbol (concert tickets, a sake set, a celophane-wrapped basket of fruit, a $10 Sam Goody gift card, etc.)

The really aggravating thing about the annual gift compulsion -- I think -- is that we're forced to make something so personal (and often best left unexplained) render itself in a form that is often grossly financial. A lot of thought goes into the give-and-take between relationship and dollars, and much of it goes unspoken. The result is that we sometimes give (or are given) gifts that annoy as much as they please.

Gifts aren't just things -- they answer questions. 

1) Do you know me? This works on a lot of levels. Maybe you know I'm a reader, so you get me a book. Bravo -- but if you get the wrong genre, you clearly don't know me very well. Wrong author within genre -- less of a blunder, still aggravating -- I like the novels of V.S. Naipaul, not Dave Eggers. A book by a good author that's redundant -- unfortunate, but who really knows another person's book collection intimately? Not all that many people, and it shows a fairly good instinct about what the person would have enjoyed (and indeed did enjoy). If you're not sure whether a mystery or a Civil War history book is going to go over better, maybe it's time to switch it up and cop out with something generic -- no one's going to get angry over a Borders gift certificate. 

2) What do you think I'm worth? Once you've set a standard of gifting -- a coffee mug, a DVD box set, a standing mixer -- every subsequent year's gift is judged by what came before. Upshifting or downshifting can send a message -- or not, depending on how cleverly chosen the gift is and how much the recipient actually tracks this stuff.

3) How much do you have to spend? A grad student studying English won't be doling out the lucre the way a software company executive will -- and (almost everyone) gets that. The sliding scale depends on the fortunes of the one tossing the gift around.

4) How much time and talent do you have? My grandmother paints. My grandfather throws and fires his own pottery. Sometimes, I'm given a painting or a piece of pottery as a gift. The amount of "them" that is in those gifts put the item in a place that is entirely removed from the $-to-taste-to-tact calculus that most gifts get sucked into. They're personal. And they're awesome.

5) Are we so close that this gift can't possibly go wrong? There are people -- good friends, parents, maybe everyone if you're liberal-minded enough -- who get a free pass. Any gift (other than the calculated insult -- see below) gets a pass and sincere thanks, as does (probably) no gift whatever. Gifts are gravy when they arrive, but that's all -- you know your parents love you whether they get you a flat-screen TV or just an invitation to Christmas dinner.

6) Are you dumb enough about gifts that you get a free pass? There are certain people -- often male, for whatever reason -- who wrestle with gifts whenever they're required, and tend to screw them up. The charitable spare them. A lack of tact -- or taste -- isn't a character flaw any more than a lack of ability to sing on key. There are good souls who are careless givers.

7) Does the gift contain a hidden agenda? The paranoia of the giver and the complexity of the relationship comes to bear, here. Maybe a sweater that's four sizes too large -- or too small -- is intended as some kind of yarn-based commentary. More likely it's a harmless estimating error. That's where the relationship context comes in. Giving a vegan a delicious assortment of country smoked sausages, on the other hand, is a declaration of war. 

Make no mistake -- the dollars-to-hours-to-careful thought-to-feelings agenda churns all year long. But the holiday season is when we reap the rewards. Or the whirlwind. Whichever.