For the last eighteen years, Pete and I have made most of our Christmas gifts. It’s something that we love to do, not just because it feels like we’re keeping the spirit of the season, but also because it allows us to let loose our creativity. It never really feels like Christmas until we start the annual cooking and crafting ritual. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be blogging about the things we’re making for Christmas. Hopefully you’ll find something that inspires you to create your own handmade gifts this year!
Why should you even bother making presents when they’re so easy to buy? Here are some of the reasons we do it :
1. As I mentioned above, we really enjoy the process. We love the feeling that we’re giving of ourselves – homemade gifts are far more personal, and our friends seem to appreciate the time and effort we put into them. The proviso here is that they can’t be crap – don’t give people things made from toilet paper rolls, unless the rolls are filled with growing heirloom seedlings and your friends are avid gardeners.
2. It saves us a fortune. $20 won’t buy a decent present, but it’s enough to create several homemade gifts. Because of that, it allows us to give freely, without the miserly Scroogeness that a tight budget imposes on Christmas spending.
3. It allows us to give small gifts without obligating the recipient to respond. I love that we can take a plate of cookies to the neighbours and no-one feels the need to reciprocate. I don’t ever want our gift giving to impose a sense of obligation. It’s much easier to achieve that with homemade presents, particularly baked goods, than it is with purchased items.
4. Wherever possible, we try and give consumables at Christmas. Our houses are all so full of clutter – it’s much nicer to give something that isn’t going to compound that issue. Most of the gifts come from our kitchen, although we’ll occasionally include small homemade items, like Christmas decorations, beeswax candles or crystal bookmarks.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve been packing mini hampers for Christmas. We purchase small paper bags with drawstring handles, and fill them with goodies – last year, each bag had a couple of jars of jam, some homemade vanilla syrup and a small bag of chocolate truffles. We also gave small bags of hot chocolate mix, plates of almond bread and little boxes of chocolate chip cookies. Items like the hot chocolate, jams and vanilla syrup can be made well in advance, leaving just the baked goods to be made in the week before Christmas.
Watch this space – there’s lots more to come!
PS. Please have a look at our new Christmas page for more gift ideas!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
That sounds so lovely Celia – far more in keeping with what Christmas spirit should be about. I have been trying to convert my family (and my husbands family) away from the gift giving for the last few years. My family eventually warmed to the idea of only giving something you have made yourself. My husbands family was not so successful. So last year I took the bolshie approach (I know you will find this hard to believe of me :)) and said words to the effect of ‘please don’t give us or our kids anything. We will be donating money to a charity instead of buying gifts for anyone this year”. Got a bit of a shocked reaction but it worked…for us anyway. I didnt have to do the detested huge shopping effort for 35 Christmas gifts! And our house was not further filled with tons of stuff for the kids.
Spice Girl, I knew you would understand. I can’t stand the forced Christmas-time shopping either – I think that having to buy gifts under pressure always leads to poor choices. And I really don’t want to give someone a vase they might never use – I’d much rather be giving some homemade jam and a bag of chocolate truffles!
I wish I were close by Celia….close enough to receive a couple of hampers :-) I love Christmas but I hate the pressure of shopping…like spice girl says for 35 presents.I’d much rather show people appreciation with a meal :-) or some little gifts. Last christmas I made green tomato chutney and filled baskets with cheese. I’ve also considered vanilla sugar, mulled wine spice packs and vanilla extract but we’ll see…time permitting
Oh, I’d LOVE if someone gave me a basket of chutney and cheese! Try making vanilla syrup with your extract instead, Oz. The extract goes much further that way, plus the syrup is far more popular with most people. I once had a lovely Chilean lady in a neghbouring city trade me some homemade empanadas for a large bottle of syrup, she loved it that much. Pete’s recipe is here, in case it’s of any use.