5 Gift giving ideas for the holiday

Christmas is upon us, and we all know what that means, gifts and more gifts! But giving out gifts the traditional way is a bit outdated. After all, people except you to give them gifts in this period, there is nothing special about it. To make it memorable, you need to get creative with your gift giving ideas. To help you out with this, here are 5 gift giving ideas for the holiday that will definitely grab everyone’s attention.

1. Send your loved ones the recipe for some exotic meal

Food and drinks are an integral part of the festive season. To make it even more interesting, why not send the people in your life the recipe and ingredients for an exotic dish that they have never prepared before? For instance, you can send the ingredients for making Turkish Apple Tea as can be found on the Tea and Coffee website. It’s a simple gift, but it will definitely catch their attention.

2. Give a rotating box

This is quite an interesting gift-giving concept. You start by sending out gift boxes to your friends containing simple gifts and personal notes. Each friend then removes the gift items, replaces them with their own then adds a note for you. Once the gift boxes come back to you, you take out the gifts that your friends have given you and read out their notes about you. It is a creative idea and can help create a stronger bond between you and your friends. The anticipation waiting for your gift to come back to you is also part of the fun. 

3. The single gift

This gift giving idea breaks away from the element of surprise that comes with most festive season gifts. So how does the single gift work? Well, it’s quite simple. A group of friends or family come together and pool resources. They then arrange for a group gift. For instance, if you and your friends have a common desire for travel, you can come up with a plan and gift yourselves a vacation to any destination in the world where you have all longed to travel to. Creating memories is one of the best ways of strengthening the bond between you and your loved ones during the holiday season. The anticipation of the trip coming up, and all the planning that goes with it, is also a lot of fun you can have together. 

4. Give out a troll gift

This is a funny gift that you give to the people closest to you. Here is how it works: look for the funniest crappy gift you can find, then give it to one of your friends. They then commit to sending this gift to one other person during next year’s festive season.  Troll gifts are perfect for those with a good sense of humour and who like to have some fun during the holidays.

5. Use a spin to choose who opens gifts

This is another funny and playful way of gift giving. It works by having all your friends and family sit in a circle. You then put gifts in the middle and start the spin. Whoever it points to is the one who should give everyone else a gift, no matter how small it is. This way, you create a playful atmosphere in the holidays. After all, it’s all about fun and happiness, right? You can add a twist by making all the gifts anonymous, and so both the giver and the receiver do not know which gift they are giving and receiving. Of course the risk there is that you get your own gift back, but you can create some rules against that. The key thing is that everyone buys gifts that would work for everyone and are general enough for anyone in the group to enjoy. If the gifts are not kept anonymous, they can be as personal as you like. An added benefit is that everyone partakes in the enjoyment of one person opening their gift. It stretches out the time you spend giving gifts and it avoids everyone openings their own presents without paying attention to those around them. After all, we give gifts to make each other happy. Seeing a happy face when they open your special present is a gift all in itself! 

 


Christine Buske is a former academic who left science at the bench, and now considers herself a woman in tech. She is a frequently invited speaker, and enjoys talking about career transformation (particularly leaving academia for the business world), tech, issues around women in tech, product management, agile, and outreach. She is a proud Canadian resident, and qualifies as a "serial expat".

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