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CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Every December brings the same nightmarish vi-sion. It begins at a deserted mall stacked with amillion dollars’ worth o products. Customers orma perimeter a thousand eet outside the mall.Then, out o nowhere, a red tornado strikes—justthe mall and not the crowd—and lits the cloth-ing and appliances and books and DVDs into theair. As quickly as the cyclone landed, it rises backup to the sky. Then the products rain gently downon the crowd.“Hey, I got a toaster,” says someone in thecrowd.“Look, I got a red sweater, not my size orcolor,” says another.“Wow, I got a singing fsh.”And these are the lucky ones.Miraculously, no one is hurt, everyone getssomething, and neither the building nor any o the products are damaged. But ater the thrill o ree stu wears o, people realize that they donot have what they want.
Copyrighted Material
CHAPTER ONE
I go around with a clipboard asking people inthe crowd how much they would willingly havepaid or what they got. A ew got things they wanted, or now realize they want ater readingthe packaging. But most are unenthusiastic abouttheir windalls. They would not have been willingto pay anything close to the purchase price, i anything at all. When I tally the responses, peo-ple are willing to pay an average o twenty-fvecents on the dollar o retail price.I’d like to say you can rest easy because theseevents never happened. But they did, and they do every year in much o the world. The red tor-nado is Santa Claus. And despite the warm eel-ings he evokes in children, his tornado o givingdoes a perennially poor job o matching stu withpeople. In so doing, he destroys a lot o value, just as he turned our million dollars’ worth o products into a mere $250 thousand worth o sat-isaction or the shoppers encircling the mall.Every holiday season in the living rooms o amilies in rich countries we experience some-thing similar to the red tornado, only without theactual unnel cloud. For months beore the bigday, mothers and athers—mothers, mostly—runaround trying to fnd the right gits or their lovedones, young and old. Some git recipients areeasy to second-guess. It takes little imagination topredict that a our-year-old will like a doll or a toy
Copyrighted Material
INTRODUCTION
truck. As kids get older, it gets tougher to fnd asurprise git that they’ll appreciate, but older kidsoten take out the guesswork with specifc requestsor this year’s ashionably conormist clothes. Andthen there are the adults or whom we are obligedto get something. We know that Uncle Jim andhis wie and kids will be there, so we have to gethim something. But what sort o music does yournephew like this year? Does his tongue piercingprovide a clue? And grandma’s coming. You haveno idea what she wants, but—believe me—shehas even less o a clue about what you and yourkids over seven want. When the day arrives, amilies—and extended
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amilies—gather around a tree or a hearth or amenorah to exchange holiday gits. Kids squeal in
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delight as they open their dolls and trucks. With young children especially, the gits matter lessthan the ritual o ripping o wrapping paper andbows. Teenagers eign surprise—or grandma’sbeneft—and register actual approval or the gitsthey specifcally requested. They roll their eyes atthe music and movies you buy them. Because you’ve raised them well, they manage a smile orgrandma’s gits. What kid doesn’t need a candle?But the abricated smiles aren’t limited to theteens. The adults all arrange their aces into ex-pressions o pleasure as they unwrap items they would never buy or themselves. “A cribbage
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