the gift behind the gift

"...so here's to birthdays-past then..." quietly proposed the goblin trying to think to himself which one had been his best of many, then adding "...you know, looking back now, perhaps the best gift I ever received, for my birthday that is, was not what I actually received at all, instead it is the unfading memory of someone who gave me something at the time, where those now late people who are in some long gone ago setting today are still mine by it, just as they would be yours too perhaps if you thought back upon them today...", so "many happy returns" is just that, and turns out to be some spell of association behind the gift itself that then becomes the real gift perhaps all these years later