Creativity For Christmas
How to give the best gifts this holiday season...
There's a full step-by-step process at the end of the article.
Photo by Laura James
Holiday Problems?
We all have 'em.
There are three typical challenges regarding gifts and the holidays.
- 💡 You have no idea what to get people no matter how hard you think about it!
- ⏱️ You just don't have the time to do the christmas shopping.
- 💳 You are strapped for cash and so full of love that you're probably going to rack up credit card debt this holiday season... again.
Let's solve all three...
Side note: As an innovation consulting company we've worked on some really complex challenges, but wow... Holiday shopping is tough.
The key to this will be thinking creatively.
Loved Ones
In the frenzied rush of holiday madness, people have been know to trample their neighbors in order to secure deals, discounts, and commercial goods for their friends and families. What incredible acts of love we humans are capable of 😜
Wild as this might be, there's a lesson in it: Different people show and receive love in different ways.
So, when thinking about the loved ones you'd like to give gifts to, think about how they receive love.
Maybe your uncle really does love socks! It's possible.
Or, maybe he really misses his wife that passed away, and some old photos of her printed on canvas is the kind of warm gesture that'll show you miss her too. And, he won't feel so alone this Christmas.
You could buy your aunt a sweater. Or, you could write her a really bad poem on really nice paper with your terrible handwriting, and she'd probably treasure and cherish it long after that sweater would have been donated.
Make sure to think about how your loved ones receive love, before thinking about what to get them.
You might just find that expensive gifts aren't nearly as meaningful as something with a personal touch.
Lots Of Ideas For Gifts
I talk about it all the time. If you want better ideas, you have to come up with LOTS of ideas!
When you're thinking about what to gift someone for the holidays, you're going to want to actually write down a bunch of ideas. Grab a sheet of paper, or a note taking app, or just write yourself an email, and list out gift ideas for each loved one. Come back to it once or twice a week, and over time you'll start to get some really interesting ideas!
Here's the full article and quick 5-minute video on how to come up with LOTS of ideas: First Rule Of Creative Thinking »
With so many ideas and so many loved ones, who has the time?
That's where the everybody gift comes in...
The Everybody Gift
When I was a teenager, my older brother (then 23 or so) did something I thought was absolutely genius.
He bought a whole bunch of chocolate truffle making ingredients and a couple of weird looking pots and utencils, and spent one Sunday making a bunch of batches of all kinds of chocolate truffles.
He solved the whole Christams gift problem in one day!
(I saw Christmas mostly as a problem back then. Teenagers are weird.)
I think everyone should do this. Not chocolates per se, but a kind of catch-all gift that'll work for everyone.
What was very cool about chocolates is that he could make different batches based on different people's tastes. He'd do a box of white chocolates for grandma, or dark ones for our mom, cherry filled kind for one aunt, a mixed batch for another aunt, and so on.
Let's come up with a few everybody gift ideas.
- If you happen to like writing, you can get some fancy paper and write each person a poem. Maybe the young ones get riddles instead of poems. Or, maybe you write a fictional short story with a fantastical adaptation of each family member in it. Maybe you read it when you're altogether, or record it and send it around. Maybe you team up with an artistic family member and they do illustrations of each fantastical family member (mom as a lioness, your little cousin as a chatty dolphin, and so on). Everyone's in the story!
- If you're a photographer, you can edit together an album or order prints for different friends & family, or do a family photoshoot. You can gather up some baby photos and create a fun guessing game. Everyone gets a photo!
- Recipes are another fun gift idea. What if you put together a list of family recipes? And, what if you mixed in some metaphoric recipes, like your cousin's recipe for a good prank, and your dad's recipe for an epic travel adventure? You could put together a family recipe book like no other, half full of food, the other half with all kinds of wonderful life experiences. Everyone gets a copy!
- Donations are a fun one too. There are all kinds of charities that give incredible perks for donations. It's possible you could take all that money that you would have spent on clothes and toys and make a donation to a local museum in exchange for a private tour, or a donation to a coral restoration charity and join their dive program. After all, isn't Christmas all about charity?
Let's summarize.
Holiday Gift Giving... Step By Step
Alright, here we go!
💛 Step 1: Think about how your loved ones receive love.
Make a list, like Santa, and write down how each of your loved ones receive love.
This should be a list of the people you'd like to give individual gifts to.
Gary Chapman's work on love languages can be helpful here. Some people are all about spending quality time together, others about kind words, or acts of service, and some people just really love sarcasm and jokes.
💡 Step 2: Come up with LOTS of ideas before settling on what to gift
Write down gift ideas for each person on your list. Check in and add more ideas each day until you have lots of good ideas for each person.
If the ideas are so good it's hard to choose, then you've got enough ideas.
Use our article and video on how to come up with LOTS of ideas for help: First Rule Of Creative Thinking »
🎁 Step 3: Come up with an everybody gift idea.
It could be food, deserts, handmade ornaments, poems, riddles, a board game you invented, a photo collage, a donation to charity for the whole family, or anything else. It could be a dear you hunted. I've never tasted venison. I'd love that gift!
Make sure it's something everyone can take part in.
Maybe you can make a simple video lesson to share something you've learned in your life that might be of value to others...
Speaking of which, I would love to share Innovation 101 with you: Innovation 101 »