I cringe at the idea of offending any of you who lovingly make homemade gifts. Yours are probably beautiful. I only offer the following comment to those who may feel guilty that they don’t have the time or energy to hand make stuff. Please forgive my offensiveness.

Most of the homemade gifts I have received are so amateurish and unneeded that they almost always get tossed in my next salvation army trip. I live on the East Coast, far from Utah family, so they don’t necessarily see this discarding going on. And I dread the day we might move back to Utah and have to answer for one of those loving, truly unwanted gifts. Even a professional looking quilt I received once didn’t match the color scheme I really wanted, and after years of keeping it in a closet, I finally parted with it.

I vote for giving people theater tickets or restaurant gift certificates (or massage, or babysitting). Truly enjoyable things that leave no material trace. The downside of this is that the amount of money you spent is apparent–tacky in many circles, I know. In that case, I agree with the food disposable gifts when possible. Perfume and lotions are supposed to be disposable too, but at the rate I go through them, they’re not, so I end up donating them to humnitarian kits. I don’t have good answers for what gifts to give to people who love gifts; I just do the best I can. But just in the interest of airing the other side: not everybody honestly appreciates homemade gifts. They make me feel guiltier about parting with them then something bought (which I also freely discard as needed.) They also make me uncomfortable when it comes my turn to reciprocate. I can’t make anything beautiful enough to be worth keeping, so my raw time investment in the return gift will not equal the one I’ve received.

Another favorite gift is an event that creates a lasting memory. For example, my mother always took us to see the Nutcracker when I was a child, so last year I took three of my grandchildren to a professional performance of this classic Christmas ballet. I bought them each an illustrated book of the story and a cd of the music a couple of weeks before the perfomance, so they already hand some familiarity with it ahead of the big night. It turned out to be a gift for myself. Nothing could be more enjoyable than watching children you love wrapped up in joy. It was pure delight. This year there are four children anxiously awaiting the special night when we will see the Nutcracker again. [This is not an inexpensive gift, so it means I have to limit other gifts, but no one has complained.]

As for giving to extended family and friends, we make charitable contributions in their names. Some of our favorites are the LDS Perpetual Education Fund, LDS Humanitarian Services and Heifer International.

Growing up we never had enough so as soon as I went out on my own I used by brand new credit card to buy nice gifts for my parents and siblings. Even after paying the bill for quite a while I didn’t regret it.

One of those years of not quite having enough we were the receivers of sub for Santa for the ward. It was shocking because we didn’t think we were THAT poor. Something it communicated to me even at a young age is that a true gift is not earned. The people who gave us those gifts didn’t know me, didn’t know if I had been naughty or nice but wanted to give me something really good.

That is the feeling I hope to give my children on Christmas morning. That no matter what they have or haven’t done they are worth a gift or even 5. Not measured in teaspoons but filled up and running over. No, gifts don’t equal love but stinginess can make a child pause and wonder.

The older kids, though, all pooled their money and worked extra chores around the house to earn extra money so they could buy their baby brother something pretty expensive. It was really cool to watch them work so hard for something they knew would make him happy.

I don’t even want to start shopping. There are just too many people that I love to adequately give them all a token of my love at Christmas time. How do you guys do that!!? If I went completely home-made, I would’ve had to have started back in February!

One year for my father (who was terminally ill and bedridden in a care facitily, so really didn`t “need” anything) I made a calendar of my kids` art work from over the previous year (colour photo-copied and reduced etc as necessary), The kids each chose page/s and decorated them – drew more pictures, stuck stickers, glitter glue etc etc. We wrote in all the family birthdays and other events we wanted to. The hardest bit was trying to figure a way to make the pages tear off. It was a lot of fun, and he really enjoyed having it.