Does Christmas shopping make you feel this way? Read on…
Giving gifts is an important part of Christmas for most of us. But finding the right gift can be stressful, because our budgets only stretch so far, we have no idea what some people want, and others already have everything they need.
What to do?
Rethinking gifts
Most adults don’t need more stuff. We already have plenty, including a collection of “Gifts of Christmas Past” we don’t really need and rarely use. This year, why not consider giving gifts that won’t add to the recipients’ stuff-we-have-to-store-somewhere piles. How is that possible?
Give experiences, not stuff.
Instead of asking, “Will Uncle Bob like this thing?” try “Will Aunt Jenny enjoy using this?” In other words, focus on giving experiences rather than things.
Experience-focused gifts come in several flavors:
Consumables: Things the recipient can enjoy using up, like a bottle of wine, a decadent cheesecake, or some hard-to-find specialty ingredient you know they use. (My personal favorites include powdered coconut milk packets and Mexican vanilla.) But consumables can be anything that gets used up over time: paints, drawing paper, photo paper, fishing line, yarn, etc. For maximum enjoyment, try to think of items the recipient would not necessarily spend money on, like top-of-the-line markers or fancy journaling books.
A Night Out: This category includes restaurant and movie gift cards, but why not make it more personal? Create a certificate inviting some friends over for a dinner party or an after-church brunch. Or simply tell them to keep a certain day open for a surprise event, (anything from hitting a special exhibit at a museum to hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail.) This idea was a winner with my son: He received money from his aunt with instructions that he spend it doing something fun with friends, so he took a bunch of his college buddies to see a movie. What an awesome gift!
David and friends after enjoying a movie.
Enhance a hobby: Maybe your ten-year-old niece loves to draw. Why not give her an art lesson or two. Or a day at an art museum. The idea is to work off an existing hobby or passion and find a new way to enjoy it—such as a gift certificate for your favorite photo-bug to create an album of her favorite photos on Snapfish, or an invitation for a special day where the two of you can enjoy a hobby together. I have fond memories of doing this with my grandmother. Over the years we made a terrarium, homemade butter mints, her famous sticky rolls, and other cool stuff.
Service: Who doesn’t appreciate it when somebody does something nice? A gift of service can be anything from a certificate for a free car wash to showing up and offering to clean out the flower beds or rake the yard. This is an especially nice gift for someone for whom outside maintenance has become a challenge, or if you have an expertise you can share, like cutting hair, fixing cars, or getting the laptop back to working at max efficiency. My boys enjoy giving their grandfather a few trailer-loads of firewood—delivered and neatly stacked. What can you do that will make someone else’s day? Offer to help out in the kitchen at their next party? Wash windows? Organize their closets? Bring them dinner once a week for a month? The sky’s the limit.
I hope you have fun thinking outside the usual Christmas box. Happy experience-building!
Top photo by Ambro via freedigitalphotos.net
Wow! I am very excited to think about these ideas and come up with even more! It really resonated with me how meaningful these types of gifts could be since the one gift I would kill for is a professional massage. Thanks for sharing!
Sign me up for a massage too! I like looking at this from the angle that consumable gits are not “used up” but “enjoyed” which is more than can be said for that random knick-knack you might otherwise get.