I need to have this explained to me because of cultural differences

I’ve noticed that a real lot of people from a certain kind of social background, like Clint Scerri, Luciano Busuttil and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, always thank their nearest and dearest for things and wish them happy birthday or congratulations or so on Facebook, and more peculiarly still, on their own Facebook Timeline and not on the Timeline of the person they are thanking or glad-wishing.

I mean, where I come from, if you want to thank your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend or children for something, or wish them well, you tell them face to face if you live with them or ring them up if you don’t.

Because what you’re doing is thanking them or wishing them well, and not showing off in public.

Posting thanks to spouses and boyfriends/girlfriends, with details of the present, strikes me not as thanking them at all, but as being done exclusively for the purpose of boasting and showing off, two absolute no-nos.

It really is such a hamallu thing to do – in this case, an even bigger hamallagni than the present itself.

I can’t understand why people do it – really, I can’t. It is as though they have no interior life at all, and think they and their relationships exist only as long as other people notice them. Presents are therefore only of value if other people know about them, and are not precious in themselves as something given by a person held dear.