The Meaning of Gift Giving

What does giving a gift to someone mean to YOU? It may be out of duty as it is for the same birthday each year, it may be an exciting time when you need to choose a special gift for a new baby, or a gift for an upcoming wedding ... whatever reason you give a gift it is always so much better to have lots of thought put into it and for it to be unique, inspirational and possibly even a personalised gift!!

The custom of gift giving seems to stem originally from the Roman tradition of presenting the Emperor and each other with good luck tokens, called ‘strenae’.

As is often the case, this practice escalated perhaps in an effort to receive special favours or impress, so that more precious gifts were given, sometimes clothing, gold and silver. This happened during what was called Saturnalia. We think the tradition probably goes back even further to the Babylonians, when the reincarnation of Nimrod as his own son, by his wife Semiramis, was born at the Winter Solstice in late December. In honour of this event Semiramis organised the cutting down and decorating trees (in Roman tradition they used decorated fir trees).

By AD324 the custom of Saturnalia was ingrained in the culture and the new Christian Emperor, Constantine, needed to satisfy both his new religion and the masses and it is said that he converted Saturnalia into Christmas.

Part of the gift-giving tradition of the western world is also tied up with reference to the gifts of the Three Wise Men who brought gifts at the birth of baby Jesus. Outside of the Judao-Christian world the Druids used to make a gift of their holy plant mistletoe at the beginning of each New Year!

Here at Dieselfrog.com we really do pride ourselves on offering you a great range of unique, unusual, inspirational and often personalised gift ideas. We are constantly on the search for new gift ideas to help you to give that extra special gift with, of course an affordable price tag!