Holiday Tipping Scrooge
Each year around this time, it seems that every newspaper, magazine and blog reminds me of all the people I need to tip for the holidays and how much I should be giving. I generally follow these guidelines to a “t” but recently I have noticed a tinge of grumpiness and reluctance setting in whenever I reach for my wallet.
Perhaps this is because I was raised by immigrant parents, who were always a bit tight with the purse strings. As a child, I watched them calculate exactly 15%– not including tax and not a penny more!– on every dining bill, and sometimes less when service was not up to par.
Or perhaps I have been too influenced by fear-mongers in the media who seem to continually report on the not-yet-fully-recovered economy and the impending cliff we are all about to fall off of, flaming worries that consumers like myself need to be extra careful about their savings and spending.
Or perhaps I am just getting grumpy as I age…
My spouse, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of me He is the Santa to my Scrooge. $2 per luggage at the airport, give ‘em $10! (I cringe at the thought but, come to think of it, he has not lost a bag yet.) When it comes to tipping during the holidays or throughout the year, his is a spirit of sincere generosity as well as gratitude.
In the book The Seven Stages of Money Maturity, George Kinder writes: “Money [as compared to bartering] created a new, limitless world, one rooted in our sense of fairness and reciprocity with one another…Giving money becomes one way of showing gratitude. Every time we buy a newspaper or an orange or a Joseph Conrad novel or a new car, we say thank you to the person who sold it to us and to all the people whose labor has made this gift possible.”
And tipping is a great expression of such gratitude. It is not an obligation that we should begrudge or feel guilty about, or for some who may have a tendency to overtip, even feel righteous about. It is not something that should be rooted in your past relationships with money, nor something that should be influenced by future fears about lack or scarcity.
It is simply a way to say thank you for something that you received and have benefited from.
So money ghosts be gone! By the end of his night’s journey, Ebenezer proclaimed, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” For all those tipping Scrooges like myself, his are great lessons to keep in mind this holiday season.