Should I get my neighbour something for Christmas?

Last Christmas, my neighbour gave us a Belgian chocolate box for bringing in his rubbish bins. Do I have to give him a Christmas gift this year when he hasn’t brought in our bins ever?
R.B., Berwick, VIC

Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch

You seem to be suggesting that this Christmas gift from your neighbour was actually some kind of business transaction: that you were being paid for a year’s worth of bin-retrieval services, using the Belgian currency of a chocolate-coated hazelnut praline shaped like a bivalve marine mollusc for some obscure Belgian reason. And in a crazy, cynical, unChristian way, maybe you’re right: maybe all Christmas gifts are a type of business transaction, the gift-giver rewarding the gift-recipient for providing goods and/or services over the previous four BAS quarters, GST included. So a loved one or a close friend would get a premium gift to cover 12 months of reliable, trustworthy love and affection, quality guaranteed, with a zero-dollar call-out fee every time they popped round for a visit. Not-as-close friends and workmates might get a less-valuable gift for supplying occasional small talk at parties or an amusing workplace poop prank involving miso paste and a dessert spoon.

And now you’re wondering, do I need to give an annual, end-of-year payment to a neighbour who delivered no goods and services at all? But think hard: this neighbour must have provided something over the year that was worth a cheap Christmas card or some failed home-made cookies – even if it was just a friendly hello every time you passed his house. Or the free lemons you sneakily picked off that overhanging branch of his lemon tree. Or the fact that for 12 months he never once yelled out, “You can do mine next, haw haw haw!” when he saw you washing your car in the driveway.

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