Birthdays. Weddings. Christmas.
Easy.
The calendar tells you what to do, you buy the gift, hand it over and everyone knows why you're there.
It's all the other occasions that get a little murky.
Do you take something when you're invited for dinner?
What about when someone has done you an enormous favour?
New house? New job? Promotion? Retirement?
Someone having an absolutely rotten week?
And what about seeing something in a shop that is so completely them that you buy it even though their birthday is seven months away?
Do we actually need an occasion to give someone a gift?
The calendar has made things rather convenient
There are certain occasions when a gift has become part of the furniture.
Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, Christmas, baby showers, graduations and retirements all come with fairly well-established gifting traditions.
Nobody is particularly surprised when a present appears.
In fact, depending on the occasion, its absence may be considerably more noticeable.
These are the easy ones.
The occasion provides the reason.
But some of the best reasons to give someone something never appear on a calendar.
Thank you sometimes needs a little help
Someone feeds your dogs while you're away.
A neighbour arrives with jumper cables when your car refuses to cooperate.
A friend gives up a Saturday morning to help you move something that was described as "not very heavy" and turns out to require four adults and several new swear words.
You can absolutely say thank you.
Sometimes, though, you want to put a little weight behind it.
That's where a gift comes in.
It doesn't have to match the value of what somebody did for you. Trying to calculate it that way rather misses the point.
You're not settling an invoice.
You're saying:
I noticed what you did for me.
That's different.
Congratulations deserves more than birthdays
We tend to associate presents with the big milestones.
But life is full of smaller victories.
A new job.
A promotion.
Starting a business.
Passing an exam.
Finishing a course.
Buying a first home.
Finally finishing the renovation that was only supposed to take six weeks.
Getting through something difficult.
Sometimes the achievement itself is reason enough.
There doesn't need to be cake.
Although cake rarely hurts.
Sometimes things go horribly wrong
Gifting isn't only for happy occasions.
People lose jobs.
Relationships end.
Plans fall apart.
People grieve.
Sometimes somebody you care about is simply having an utterly dreadful time.
This is where a gift isn't there to fix anything.
A bunch of flowers can't make grief disappear. Chocolate can't repair a broken heart. Tea won't solve a crisis.
But that isn't really what you're asking it to do.
Sometimes a small gesture just says:
I'm here.
Or:
I'm thinking about you.
There are times when that says quite enough.
When someone has gone to trouble for you
Dinner at someone's home.
A weekend away with friends.
Staying in someone's guest room.
Someone cooking an enormous meal while you arrive having contributed nothing except your sparkling personality.
Do you have to take a gift?
Not necessarily.
But if somebody has gone to considerable trouble on your behalf, arriving with a little something to acknowledge it has survived as a social custom for good reason.
It isn't payment for dinner or accommodation.
Nobody needs to calculate the going rate for two lamb chops, a baked potato and a spare bedroom.
It's simply a way of saying:
Thank you for having me.
What about "just because"?
There is no birthday.
No anniversary.
No invitation.
Nobody has done you a favour.
You simply see something and immediately think of somebody.
They would love that.
There is something rather lovely about a gift that arrives with no occasion attached to it.
Nobody expected anything.
There was no reminder on the calendar and no social obligation to fulfil.
You just thought of them.
Which, incidentally, is how my "just in case" cupboard started.
I'd see something that was perfect for someone and buy it. Or I'd find something too good to leave behind and know that, sooner or later, there would be exactly the right person or occasion for it.
Before long there were gifts tucked away for forgotten birthdays, dinner invitations, thank-yous, farewells, last-minute celebrations and those inevitable moments when you suddenly remember something important at approximately 6:15 on a Sunday evening.
A friend eventually looked at the cupboard and pointed out that it was basically an online gift shop waiting to happen.
She wasn't wrong.
SISU grew from that cupboard.
So when should you gift?
Birthdays, weddings and Christmas will continue to announce themselves.
Life isn't always that organised.
Sometimes someone does something kind.
Sometimes there's something worth celebrating.
Sometimes somebody needs to know you're thinking about them.
And sometimes you spot something that has another person's name written all over it — metaphorically, hopefully, because otherwise returning it could be tricky.
Perhaps that's the answer.
Gift when there's a reason.
And every now and then...
gift when there isn't.