Are You Allowed To Give Gifts on Shabbat?

Are you allowed to give gifts to someone on Shabbat? Let's say you go to a bar mitzvah (coming-of-age celebration), and you're walking on Shabbat, obviously in a place where you're allowed to carry, where there's an eruv (enclosure permitting carrying). Otherwise, you're not allowed to take it out of your house in the first place. So let's say there's a place where there's an eruv, and you're walking to shul (synagogue) on Shabbat and you want to give the bar mitzvah boy a gift. Is that allowed on Shabbat or not? The halacha (Jewish law) is that matanot b'Shabbat are not allowed. A person is not allowed to give gifts on Shabbat because it goes under the category of mekach u'memkar b'Shabbat. It goes under the issur (prohibition) of doing business on Shabbat. We are afraid that if giving matanot, if giving presents on Shabbat, is allowed, it's going to lead people to do business, and it's going to lead people to write and sign things. So, therefore, matanot b'Shabbat, giving gifts on Shabbat, are not allowed. So what does a person do? The answer is, let's say you want to give a bar mitzvah gift on Shabbat, or whatever gift you want to give someone. What you should try to do before Shabbat is be makneh it to them. Which means, tell yourself before Shabbat, “This is a gift to somebody else; I don't own it anymore. I'm just going to deliver it to him tomorrow morning.” But you did the actual transfer of ownership from you to him before Shabbat, to the person you're giving the gift to. You do the transfer from your ownership to his. You do it before Shabbat. Then you'll have to give it to them on Shabbat because they already owned it from before Shabbat. But otherwise, you're not allowed to give them the gifts on Shabbat because matanot b'Shabbat are not allowed.