Christmas Shopping: Individual Themes

Themes for individuals can help focus Christmas gift-giving for you. The concept is to come up with a gift that potentially has many aspects to it, with a wide variety of price ranges. You, as the parents, spouse, child, etc. plan to purchase the central item and then ask others to buy related items. Go through your list and write down theme ideas.

When my children were young, I realized they were fortunate to have many people in our lives who loved to send them gifts during the holiday season. Many times we get overwhelmed with the wide variety of gifts that did not relate to each other, and we ended up with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Because of this, I came up with a solution: Christmas Gift Themes – Individualized. We have discussed how to give gifts with a theme, but now let’s look at receiving gifts with a theme.

The concept is to come up with a gift that potentially has many aspects to it, with a wide variety of price ranges. You, as the parents, spouse, child, etc. plan to purchase the central item and then ask others to buy related items. For example, one year, our daughter received a play kitchen that was a second-hand one, but very nice and within our price point. But we could not afford to outfit the kitchen with all the extras like food, shopping cart, cash register, etc., and this is where everyone else came in! We let the grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, etc. who would ask what they might give to our daughter that Christmas know about our central theme gift for her – and what a success it was! On Christmas morning, not only did our daughter get a wonderful kitchen, almost every gift she opened was related to it, and she proudly added it to her new kitchen. We continue to do this and have had themes such as an American Girl doll, Thomas the Train, Art Supplies, etc.

And don’t think this is only for children. For adults, consider a BBQ grill theme, kitchen theme, collection theme – anything that has multiple components to it will work.

Have fun deciding on what theme to use, and watch the smiles as each gift relates to another!