Christmas is just around the corner and if you are like me you might be drawing a blank when it comes to what to buy for your friends and family this year.
Buying Christmas presents for other people is hard. It’s hard to know what exactly to get them that they will actually like and enjoy, hopefully for a long time to come.
It can feel like pressure sometimes. Pressure to get it right and pressure to spend your hard-earned money on something worthwhile.
If this is something you can relate to right now, you’ve landed in the right place.
In this blog, we have some ideas for you about what kind of things actually make for a good Christmas present.
Let’s not waste any more precious shopping time and get into them.
Experiences
Christmas gifts can sometimes be unnecessary pieces of materialism and consumerism. Sometimes we buy things just for the sake of buying things and those things do not do anything to demonstrate our love for the people we are buying them for.
A great gift to give someone is a gift that is an experience, particularly an experience that they can share with you.
For example, trips, meals out, spa days, cinema days, adventures, anything like that.
Spending time with someone is the best way to show them that you love them and giving someone the gift of an experience is far more sentimental and meaningful than giving them lots of material things.
It is something they will remember for a lot longer too and something they can cherish.
Let’s be real, it also benefits you too because you get the experience of joining in.
It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.
One high-quality present over lots of cheaper presents
The Christmas industry, and yes it is an industry, has become more and more transactional and saturated. Christmas gifts are now very often about receiving lots and lots of things and showing off your big piles of Christmas boxes.
This means that the individual gifts have lessened in quality and the industry is saturated with lots of single-use, low-quality items that are mass-produced.
It is much better to give someone one or two presents that are well-made, high-quality and made to last, rather than lots of these little novelty items.
It is much more sustainable and better for the world too and so you can do your Christmas shopping knowing that you are not contributing to environmental damage.
Chances are if you are buying someone a good-quality gift it is something they really want and will really value in their life.
That sounds like a success all around to me.
Donations and sponsorships
On a similarly sustainable note, a great Christmas present is one that comes in the form of a charitable donation or sponsorship in someone else’s name.
As a society, we need to move past excessive consumerism and materialism, and changing the idea of Christmas to value the notion of giving to those in need is a great way to do that.
It also doesn’t mean you have to lose out on giving someone a cute present either. You can sponsor animals through WWF and it means you get a cuddly toy and regular updates on their wellbeing. This is the perfect gift for an animal lover.
Whatever way you choose to go, make your Christmas about love, connection, and the greater good this year.
This is always the winning way to go.