Meaningful Gift Ideas for the Holidays

Friends,

Can’t think of what to get your beloved this year for the holiday season?

Grab your spiced cider, decide you will have an answer by reading this post and invest three minutes in finding your answer.

Last week I celebrated a MAJOR birthday.  Major in terms of number of years I’ve walked above the earth.

At an intimate home gathering twelve friends created this masterpiece for me, before my eyes, at my party.  Five others had contributed to the blank canvas prior to this evening.  If you look closely you can see some phrases such as:

• Loud love
• Skipping through life
• Joy
• Love
• Speak light
• Peace
• Blessings
• Responding to the ideas I imagine
• Every day is a nice day

Now, to holiday gifts.  Christmas is twenty days away.  Hanakkuh begins December 20th.  What can you create or make which will be meaningful to you and the recipient?

When you think of the person you want to give a gift to, what is invoked within you?  How can you creatively represent that feeling or honor the memories which arise? How about writing a poem?  Or, if you don’t think you can, finding a poem which resonates with you and printing it out on beautiful paper and framing it?  You can sing your friend a parodied holiday song loaded with the memories the two of you share.  How about giving a shot at painting, drawing, or computer animating an artist representation of them?

If nothing arises innately, begin listening closely to your friend/relative in conversation.  Listen for themes and desires.  Create out of something they say.  As an example you can name a recipe after your friends constant conversation about her birth order.  Give her a recipe naming it “The Middle Child Soup” and include the dry ingredients to go with it.

My sister continued to say to me through many phone conversations “I wish I had a Karma Doll so this person could get what is coming to them and I could let it go.”  Guess what I made her?  Yep, a set of several karma dolls complete with instructions on how to use them and prayers to go with it.  My own version of a blessed voo doo doll.

Not everything needs to be made.  Buying is great, keep in mind something which reflects the recipient.  I read somewhere, and I wish I kept the source, that if each of us purchased one gift made in the United States or a gift card from a U.S. company, we would employ an additional 200,000 Americans.  I’m in.  Great experiential gifts for my friends?  Psychic readings, concert tickets, sessions with spiritual counselors, coaching sessions, classes, manicures, pedicures, travel experiences, beauty and spa treatments, books I love and want others to experience.

For my big birthday this year my daughter was short on cash and big on ideas, so she wrote my favorite restaurants and stores in the Valley asking if they would gift something for a gift basket for me.  OMG, the generosity of merchants — amazing.  She also contacted my celebrity crushes who sent me autographed photos to don my inspirational wall.  A heartfelt story can open many doors.

I’m signing off to complete my Christmas cards and drink a decaf eggnog latte’ from the American based company Starbucks:}.  I wish for you a magical holiday season.

Bonnie