What Makes a Good Gift?

It's not the monetary cost or value of the gift, as many Christmas stories attest. Good gifts don't have to be expensive.

They don't even have to come at a great personal cost. Gifts of service may be appreciated more if the service was a great sacrifice, but a caring recipient might be turned off by the fact that the giver sacrificed so much.

I would argue that not even love is a good indicator of a good gift, depending on our definition of a "good gift." A gift may be the product of a great deal of love and still not be well-received, whereas another gift might be greatly appreciated, even if little thought went into the gift.

Personally, I think that the measure of a good gift is the joy it brings to the recipient. Part of the purpose of a gift exchange is to spread joy. If a gift brings joy to its recipient, I would say it was a good gift, even very little time, money, sacrifice, or thought was put into the gift. If the gift makes people happy, it's a good gift.

However, this means that the goodness of a gift depends largely on the mood of the receiver. If a person is already in a joyful mood, it wouldn't take much to make them even more joyful, but if a person is in a bad mood, it might take an especially good gift to make them feel any joy at all.

It seems unfair to judge the goodness of a gift on the mood of the recipient. Perhaps a gift is a good gift to receive if it brings the recipient joy, and perhaps it's a good gift to give if it was motivated by love.

Of course, these ideas are not doctrine, and many of them may need revision and/or replacement, but I still think they're a good rule of thumb. Cost and value don't matter. Sacrifice doesn't matter. What makes a gift good is the amount of love the giver puts into it and the amount of joy the recipient(s) get out of it.

By those metrics, the Atonement of Jesus Christ is easily the greatest gift of all time.