Did you find lottery tickets in your Christmas stocking? Did you stuff some in someone else’s? Every holiday season, state lottery agencies spend their advertising dollars persuading consumers to buy tickets for folks on their gift lists. Here in Pennsylvania, we’ve watched versions of the same TV commercial for 20 Decembers: A jovial gentleman shuffles through snow-filled streets giving scratchoff tickets to coffee-shop and newsstand workers, while faux Dickensian carolers sing about various “instant win” games to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
I once received lottery tickets as a Christmas gift. The givers wanted me to “scratch-’n’-win” in their presence. My five tickets, which cost them a dollar each, yielded zero dollars, zero cents prize money. Call me ungrateful, but I’d have preferred the five bucks! And what if I’d won a fantastic sum? Would I have felt obligated to share it with the givers? Would they have felt resentful if I hadn’t?
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