To attract potential buyers and givers, stores need to tell a story, to arrange something in an appealing way, to persuade us that their things are special. Even discount stores like Filene's Basement want to convince you that you are a special person who's going to get this special thing to give to another special person. Today, it is fairly rare to see gifts and gift giving tied up with personal effort and time, and yet it remains impossible to draw a sharp line between the gifts themselves and those who do the giving and the receiving. The result was a startlingly elegant analysis, a book that became a pillar of anthropology. In societies built around kinship and family, Mauss declared, gifts are the glue that holds things together.
Gifts link the givers with others, whether it be another person, clan, or tribe.
Even now, the potlatch is used as a metaphor whenever people give a gift as an outward, public sign of their generosity. When you look at the objects used as gifts, you quickly realize that you don't give just anything, you give something. For the bulk of human society, the stuff of gifts is not highly optional. There's room for play, yes, but there are many rules about who gives what to whom and when. Rules go with ritual, and Mauss observed a kind of magic moving from giver to gift.