Right now, the internet is awash in click-to-buy gift guides. They promise the perfect gift (under $100!) for everyone on your list, be it the hiking husband, the cinephile niece or the beer-loving ex-girlfriend. At a time when shopping is our self-expression, it’s easy to feel that “I love you” can be said with two-day shipping. But the most memorable gifts will rarely be found in a gift guide.
Gift-giving is an art form. We can’t outsource it for convenience. It’s an act of imagination and of attention to and observation of the person you love — or at least to the person who you feel it would be observably rude to not have a present for. The truly great gift givers of this world know the secret: The best presents make the recipient feel seen. As the saying goes, it’s the thought that counts. And often, the thought doesn’t have to cost all that much.
When we asked readers to tell us about the most memorable gifts of time and care they received, we were flooded with nearly 600 responses. Amid the answers, many trends emerged. Three readers wrote in to say how much they appreciated having their car cleaned. Twenty-four readers told us about handmade cards, 23 told about photographs, 22 about lists of memories or reasons they were loved. For several people, that list took the form of a pack of playing cards transformed into “52 reasons I love you” — if you have a pack of cards and a Sharpie lying around, your unfinished holiday shopping might just have found an answer.
From this flood of answers, we chose 13 of our favorite unusual and moving gifts of time and presence. We hope this list will be the only gift guide you actually need.
( I ) Special Delivery
One Christmas in 1996, when my husband was deployed, I was feeling overwhelmed. I was a young working mother with three kids, two of them still in diapers. I lamented to a friend that I couldn’t imagine how I would get a Christmas tree, get it home and set it up, all with the kids under foot and no husband to help me. One evening, a few weeks later, there was a knock at the door. There stood that friend with a fully decorated Christmas tree. “Where do you want it?” he asked. I could barely speak through my tears. I was so touched that he took my passing comment and acted on it. Over 30 years later, though that friend and I have long since fallen out of touch, I always remember his gesture at Christmas time.
Tade Allen, Virginia Beach Estimated cost: $65 (in 1996); time: 2-3 hours
( II ) Stuck Together
My husband and I have been married for 57 years and while we enjoy giving gifts to our family and friends, we would rather save up to do something together than buy gifts for each other. I was surprised, therefore, a few years ago, when my husband gave me a birthday gift. It was a stapler. A regular, normal stapler. He noticed that I would run up to my home office when I needed to staple something and felt I shouldn’t have to do that. Today we are in a different house that is more conducive to aging in place but my home office is still upstairs and that new stapler is always handy on the first floor. I was touched that even after so many years together, my husband was still devoted to making my life better.
Rosemarie Kindon, Charlottesville, Va. Estimated cost: $10; time: 30 minutes
( III ) The Gift of Life
As a grad school graduation present to me, my father quit smoking cold turkey. He had smoked for over 40 years. It took him tremendous time and effort to quit. The beginning was especially difficult. It’s now 20 years later and he tells me he still craves cigarettes, but he remains true to his gift. He gave all of us a bright, healthy future together.
Crissy Huffard, Santa Cruz, Calif. Cost: $0; time: 20 years
( IV ) A Bed of One’s Own
One year, for my husband’s birthday, I decided it was time to kick our dog, Mango, out of bed. Rather than buy my husband one more thing he didn’t need, I wanted to remove an irritation from his life. Our 5-year-old Jack Russell/Chihuahua mix weighs only 15 pounds, but she can be surprisingly expansive at night. I set up a cozy bed on the floor for Mango with a heating pad and we finally had our bed back to ourselves. My husband loved this gift. He loved that I really thought about what would make him happy.
Angela Higgins, Golden Valley, Minn. Estimated cost: $40; time: 5 minutes
( V ) His Voice, Forever
When I was in my 20s, I asked my father to record himself reading my favorite children’s books as a Christmas present. I wanted to make sure that my kids would be able to enjoy his storytelling abilities as much as I had, even if he wasn’t around anymore by the time they were born. My father is an expert storyteller: He does all the voices and sound effects. My father is still alive, and now my son is almost old enough to appreciate being read to in person. But I still have the recording, and it brings me joy to know that my father’s voice will be preserved for generations to come.
Caryn Davies, Boston Cost: $0; time: many evenings of reading into the microphone
( VI ) The Daily Grind
Sixteen years ago, for my birthday, my wife gave me “coffee freedom for life.” I rolled my eyes when she told me. I assumed this was just a sad cover for a forgotten birthday present. But since then, she has filled the coffee maker with fresh filtered water every day and put out my coffee cup each night. She cleans the coffee maker regularly. She has purchased all of the K-Cups and whole bean and ground coffee we consume. I like flavored coffees, so she seeks out new seasonal offerings for me to try. I am in charge of the kitchen and all that is involved in planning, shopping, preparing, cooking and cleaning. But not the coffee. I enjoy my coffee carefree, cup after cup. It’s a daily, weekly and monthly effort that my wife makes for me. If that isn’t a daily recommitment of our love, then I don’t know what is.
Rony Roberts, Vian, Okla. Estimated cost: $50-$60 a month; time: a lifetime
( VII ) Budding Romance
Many years ago my husband presented me with a bag of day lily buds. I had heard that they were edible and I had told him I wanted to try some. My husband’s work often took him out to the countryside. One day, he saw an abandoned farm with a bank of day lilies growing wild. In those days, he had to wear a shirt and tie. I still smile at the visual of him out in the middle of nowhere picking lily buds in business attire.
Christine Brown, Grand Rapids, Mich. Cost: $0; time: 30 minutes
( VIII ) The Trust Us Film Festival
Last year, for Christmas, our son and his wife gave us an envelope with two printed “tickets” to the “Trust Us Film Festival,” a festival of their own invention. The gorgeous handmade tickets came inside a basket filled with small bottles of liquor from different countries, corresponding to the three films they had selected. On three separate nights, they offered us dinner and showed us films they thought we would enjoy. One film we may still have preferred to skip, but the other two were wonderful. We were delighted by their thoughtfulness and creativity. The gift gave us hours of laughter and family time. It stands out as one of the best gifts we’ve ever received.
Eve Brady, Denver Estimated cost: $24 (for the mini alcohol); time: 3 evenings
( IX ) The Spoon That Couldn’t
When my daughters were 7 and 9 years old I mentioned a couple of times as I served them spaghetti, “I’d really like a pasta spoon.” I was a teacher and a single mother, and a pasta spoon was not something we truly needed. Still, I mused, it would be nice to have one. On Christmas Day I unwrapped a homemade “pasta spoon” from my daughters. They’d broken the metal heads off two hangers and glue-gunned them to a wooden spatula. Then they’d decorated it with markers and added a few plastic beads. My first reaction was alarm at realizing they knew where I kept the glue gun. Then, I was flooded with so much love. I explained that while we couldn’t use this spoon for pasta, it was clearly a work of art and engineering. We would display it in the glass case with our fossils and treasures. It’s been 11 years and this is still the most precious gift I’ve ever gotten.
Mary Eileen Yaeger, Alexandria, Va. Cost: $0; time: 15 minutes
( X ) Borrowed Time
Every year before Christmas, when we were kids, my dad would go to the library and carefully pick out books for each of us. He wrapped them up as presents and in the days leading up to Christmas, he would let us open a book a day. We loved having special books picked out just for us. It kept us busy reading while our parents were preparing for the holidays. After the holidays, when we were done reading, he would return all the books.
Sherry Sebesta, Clifton Park, N.Y. Cost: $0; time: 2 hours
( XI ) Spinning Forward
Many years ago, I told my then-boyfriend a story about my father. As a very young child, my father had taken me to Toronto’s Santa Claus parade. I had asked my father to buy me a pinwheel, and he had replied, “You don’t want that.” I was not a child who asked for much. I felt that the message behind his refusal was that I was not worth him spending his money on. Thirty years ago, when I was in graduate school, I entered the graduate student apartment I shared with my boyfriend to find many pinwheels. My boyfriend had built a “hill” of books to place them on, and aimed an electric fan at them from below to make them spin. I was astonished and froze. Then I burst into tears. There were the pinwheels, freely given, a complete surprise, with no hidden message. That boyfriend later became my husband, and although we are now no longer together, I still love pinwheels. They remind me of what the boyfriend did for me, and not what my father said no to.
J. Lynn Fraser, Toronto Estimated cost: $5-6; time: 2 hours
( XII ) A HELPING HAND
Five or six years ago, my daughter Katy gifted me eight hands, cast in plaster. As I unpacked the box, pulling out more and more hands, I was flabbergasted. At first I didn’t realize whose hands they were. Then I put it together: There was one for each member of my immediate family, from my young grandchildren to my elderly father-in-law. It was so much fun for each person to tell the story of the casting: how hard it was to be still long enough, what went wrong, how excited they were when the hand finally emerged. Katy had to wrangle everyone, providing them with materials from afar, teaching them how to do it, giving tips on how to make an expressive hand gesture. And after Christmas, they taught me how to make my own plaster hand to join the others! They’re all now proudly displayed in our home, gesturing at me every time I walk by.
Elise Smith, Jackson, Miss. Estimated cost: $20; time: weeks of organizing
( XIII ) Patched Up
One Mother’s Day, my then-18-year-old son left me a flower and a note in the kitchen. The note read: “Your gift is upstairs.” Upstairs, I found that he had patched the hole he had punched in the wall when on a rampage about a parenting decision I’d made. His thoughtfulness felt symbolic to me: We could get angry, do or say things we regretted, and then patch things up. I think about his gift often, and about what a caring man my son has grown into. He is now 35 and he is so loving with his own young kids, who no doubt will drive him to the brink. I know they will always be able to patch things up with love.
Julie Teague, Bloomington, Ind. Estimated cost: $5; time: 1 hour
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