Experiences Make the Best Gifts

To inspire you this holiday season, I'd like to introduce you to an interesting study on gift-giving from Cornell University. Although many of you probably already know, either from intuition or your own life, that experiences make the best gifts - I invite you to contemplate the compelling reasons supporting the study's conclusion that people derive more satisfaction from experiential purchases rather than material purchases:

(1) Experiential purchases enhance social relations more readily and effectively than material goods;

(2) Experiential purchases form a bigger part of a person’s identity; and

(3) Experiential purchases are evaluated more on their own terms and evoke fewer social comparisons than material purchases.

As you shop for children this season - from toddlers to teenagers - consider giving the gift of an experience: visit a new beach, pick fruit in an orchard, go dancing, see a concert, learn to sail ...

What experiences can become gifts? Feel free to share your ideas below ...

The full study, A Wonderful Life: Experiential Consumerism and the Pursuit of Happiness, can be found here: https://cornell.app.box.com/v/HolidayGifts/file/23299939664

#gift-giving, #experiential, #consumerism, #holidays, #Waldorf Education