Your grand theory isn't new. The 1993 paper The Deadweight Loss of Chrismtas (https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/104699/original/christmas.pdf https://www.amher

Your grand theory isn't new. The 1993 paper The Deadweight Loss of Chrismtas (https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/104699/original/christmas.pdf https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/104699/original/christmas...) explores this in detail. The basic idea is let's measure what the gift cost and what the receiver valued it at. But not everything that matters can be measured and not everything that is measured, matters. The study should have accounted for the strength of relationship between the gifter and gifted and how it was affected by the gift. It should have measured social status of the gifter before and after. These deepened bonds and increased social status could pay off later in the year. The 2001 paper Poverty and public celebrations in rural India (https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/2528.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/2528.html) examines that idea and finds it to be true. When you're looking at an institution that has developed independently thousands of times across human history in wildly disparate cultures, you need to ask yourself what benefit it brings before dismissing it. This comment reminds me of the teenage atheists who think religion is worthless because it's a bunch of made up stuff they don't believe is true. Regardless of what they believe, religion has independently developed and flourished in a number of cultures. Religions that involve regular congregations bring benefits to their members, such as living longer, happier lives.