What's this gifting system and how does it work?
Topic on Forum:Wiki Talk
It's part of the SocialProfile extension and it's for thanking people for various reasons. A message can be added if needed. There's two ways of giving gifts:
1) Go to someone's user page (you may need to click the "Social profile" link first) and click "Send a gift"
2) On the sidebar, under "Troper Tools", click "Gift a Friend". You can either choose from a list of friends or type the user's name.
At the moment, there's only two gifts, including one I just created (the candy cane one). Only administrators can create gifts, though requests can be made for more.