Why Gift Giving Matters to Me

Every August my friend Elizabeth says, “It’s almost Christmas” and I cover my ears and hum a ditty.  And she uncovers my ears and says, “Before you know it, it will be Christmas” and I ignore her.  But here we are three days before Thanksgiving and she is sitting smug with a half filled Christmas closet and I wonder where September and October went. 

I love this Art Deco postcard of a messenger bearing gifts.

And so, as I try and cobble together a Christmas list, I find myself contemplating the nature of Christmas gifts and gift giving in general. 

This beautiful antique necklace is a French love token

I remember the first year I picked out my own Christmas gifts.  I was ten or eleven, and felt it was time I started participating in the gift giving as well as receiving. And so I counted my pennies, consulted with my grandmother and decided to give gifts to five family members.  I don’t remember most of the gifts I gave that year but I do remember giving my mother a beautiful cake platter that she uses to this day.

I always look for antique jewelry pieces with engravings.   This one is particularly sweet reading, "Sons to Mothers 1-13-14"

And I learned something that Christmas, that overused but true truism, it is better to give than to receive.  Or if not that, giving can be really great, because that Christmas I remember anticipating less what I would receive and more the expressions on peoples faces when they opened the presents I had purchased for them.

In Victorian England, Snake Jewelry were popularly gifted between lovers as two snake intertwined symbolized eternal love.

And ever since that Christmas, I have given gifts.  Which depending on the size of my bank account, has varied from the moderately lavish to the homemade.  One year I think I had to glue the wrapping paper shut because I ran out of money for tape.  And like my bank account, my investment emotionally in gift giving has also varied from the perfunctory to the heartfelt.  

Lockets were traditionally a gift given to a loved on and hold that tradition today.  

But this year I want to reinvest myself in why I choose to give gifts.  Because for me, when I get it right, a gift large or small can be an expression of how I value and love my friends and family. A gift can be a wonderful moment, a lasting memory of friendship or love exchanged.  Something my friend can look at and remember how much I love them.

Bands were often a place to engrave a message.  This one reads "WMH to RMN"

One of the very best gifts I’ve ever given was a 1920’s shell cameo with marcasite frame.  I gave it to my grandmother who adores cameos and it is her very favorite one.   She wears it on special occasions and she even rigged a little picture frame for it, so she can keep it on her bedside table whenever she is not wearing it.  For me it was the gift giving equivalent of a home run, because not only it is something she loves for what it is singularly, it is something sentimental and lasting and only a few people know how much which she loves cameos and I am one of them.

This cameo reminds me of the one I gave my grandmother several years ago.

I’ve given gifts that I’ve remembered and given gifts that I’ve forgotten and this year I want to give only memorable gifts.  Gifts that say I see you and I love you. This year I plan to be unabashedly sentimental.  This year I plan to wear my gift giving on my sleeve.

For more beautiful antique jewelry ideas go to isadoras.