Divest from the metallic wrapping paper!

and other last-minute comments on gift-giving

Following last year’s post about mitigating Black Friday nihilism, please enjoy the Bombazine guide to giving better gifts. Or treat it as inspiration for the ones you’re stuck on. ‘Tis the season.

People Usually Tell You What They Want

One way to give a good present is to perform a near miraculous act of applied intuition. The other way is to treat gift giving like a skill rather than divine intervention and develop that skill by paying attention, because people usually tell you what they want.

The friend who first articulated this to me followed her own advice impeccably when she visited me in Montana. I was playing a lot of beach volleyball back then, and I mentioned to her in passing my perennial debate with myself about whether to buy some sand socks. A pair arrived in the mail a few weeks after her departure. I called to thank her. “I made sure to order them from somewhere other than Amazon,” she noted, “since you don’t seem to like them very much.”

A card I made with a swatch of tissue paper, a metallic flower cut out of wrapping paper, and two sequins sewn together with a bead.

By the same token, if someone says they do not enjoy receiving gifts or identifies something they do not want, it’s important to honor their preferences. This is a way to practice better consent in gift-giving.

When my mom started using an e-reader, she told me to stop getting her physical books. For a while I disregarded this, believing I might pick literature so good it would transcend its format and maybe even convince her to return to the world of crisp paper and gilded spines. What actually happened was that my mom got annoyed. She wanted to accumulate fewer objects. She wanted to read in bed without wrist fatigue. So now I buy her e-books and generate far less frustration.

A friend who is pretty ambivalent about presents once said, “Just give me Muji store credit!” It was a joke, but I also know he meant it. Some people experience gifts as an imposition of someone else’s agenda with a side of obligatory (and therefore performative) gratitude. If that’s the case, I think it’s alright and even respectful to refrain from giving a gift.

…And Often It’s Something They Are Reluctant to Buy for Themselves

If you go shopping with someone—or they show you something they’ve been pining after online—notice what they like but don’t buy. An item that they’re clearly attracted to but deem frivolous or not-budget-appropriate is an excellent candidate for a gift.

In high school, during a group trip to the mall, a friend tried on a red dress that she clearly liked. It fit her well, but it wasn’t a good time for her to spend that kind of money, so she put the dress back. As a group we pooled funds to buy the dress and present it to her in time for an upcoming school dance.

Perks of this approach:

• Although it’s a magical little romance trope to bestow the perfect gown upon a deserving young woman before the big soiree, in real life it can be difficult to give another person clothes that fit. We already knew which size she wanted and that it suited her.

• The dress was more personal than a gift card to the shop, and in this situation, we eliminated the work of getting a ride back to that mall (oh, teenaged life.)

• At their best, gifts extend joy by coalescing pleasurable memories in an object and by showing care across time. The dress created a positive association between a day spent among friends and the dance. A gift that I am particularly proud of, both because of the finder’s high and the way that it connected a minor outing to a major accomplishment, was a stamp: at a rubber stamp specialty shop here in New York, although we both walked out empty-handed, a friend told me she might like a balloon stamp to make birthday cards. About a month later, while digging through a plastic tote in the craft section at a small thrift store in Eastern Washington, I found one! By the next time I saw her, she had reached a significant professional milestone, so I used the stamp to make her a congratulatory card and then presented her with the card and stamp together.

Some caveats:

• If you don’t know someone well enough to tell whether their enthusiasm for something is genuine, this is not the right technique to use to give them a gift. You’re better off picking something more generic (e.g. soap, candle, condiment, tea, fermented food), picking up the tab for a movie or meal, or defaulting to the Oprah’s Favorite Things approach (see below.) When I go shopping I like to touch things and pick them up. This does not mean I want to own those objects; it means that the in-person visuals and tactile experience are part of why I like browsing a store in real life, and I hope that anyone who’s out with me knows this.

• Don’t buy anything that’s also outside of your financial comfort zone. If the gift’s price causes you to feel that the recipient is required to like it, it likely costs too much, and you need to either adjust your expectations, figure out how to get it on sale/secondhand/make it yourself, pick a different gift, or check directly whether the recipient actually wants it.

---

---

Oprah’s Favorite Things

If you’re on the no-buy/low-buy/anti-consumerism boat, I don’t want to be the one to steer you afoul. Stay the course, as it were! And if your current stance is something along the lines of “I resent the clutter in my home and will not be inflicting that on other people,” you can also skip ahead to the “Some People Do Not Want More Stuff” section.

All that said, I still think that generosity communicated through a physical object can be worthwhile. I’m also intrigued by Kate Manne’s argument that the burden of a sustainably sourced holiday season falls unfairly on women, the group of people who are disproportionately responsible for manufacturing holiday magic. Manne writes that attempting anti-capitalism while doing the labor of picking appropriate gifts for colleagues or remembering to bring a tasteful token of appreciation for the host of a party is a weighty expectation, if not a double bind, that men do not typically experience. Put another way, choosing *not* to participate in certain forms of gift-giving may have more social-capital repercussions for women than men.

One way to have a better lineup of “unknown recipient” gifts is to imagine you’re Oprah and make a list of things that you like that have relatively broad appeal. Trust your taste! Here’s an Abby’s Favorite Things list:

• rainbow makers

• the face sunscreen from Trader Joe’s (so smooth! such a good price!)

• TÖST sparkling drinks (surprisingly good non-alcoholic beverages)

• a handmade collage card

• the lavender-orange lotion from Midnight Oil in Walla Walla

• Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik—excellent prose in an exciting fairytale

• tea from Lake Missoula Tea Company or Brooklyn Tea

• Nexcare waterproof bandages (I once cut my finger on a water faucet right before a two-day grass volleyball tournament and this kind of bandage did not come off during play and also kept literal dirt out of the wound.)

• pouches/wallets made from recycled bike tubes

• USPS special-edition/seasonal stamps

This list is definitely specific to me, but each item is still low-ish risk because it’s useful, consumable, or (with the exception of the card) easy to pass on to another recipient.

Expensive Does Not Equal Meaningful

a human touch matters

Not everyone likes homemade goods, but it’s often true that a gift becomes more meaningful if you’re involved in its production. I have a zippered pouch that I cherish because my cousin made it at a time in her life when living space was limited and trips to town were involved. She wove the fabric on a small loom and found a stray pair of pants to source the zipper.

It’s not necessary, however, to go to such lengths to incorporate hand-crafting into something. One of my teammates mentioned that her dryer was not really drying her clothes, so after relaying the standard advice to clean the vent and checking whether she already used dryer balls (negative), I bought some wool ones, needle-felted simple designs onto them with material I already had from a past repair project, and presented them to her as a thank-you for hosting a group of us at her house.

I could make my own wool dryer balls (or I at least have sufficient crafter’s hubris to believe I could) but I frankly don’t want to, and if I had decided to do that I don’t think the gift would have ever materialized. And, for the uninitiated, needle-felting may sound refined in name, but in practice it’s just a lot of vigorous, cathartic, and unglamorous stabbing.

I once got my mom a box of cards with a motif I thought her best friend would like. My dad suggested that I also stamp and pre-address all of the envelopes to said best friend, so that all she had to do was write inside a card and mail it. This present actually made my mom cry. That did not happen because the cards had commercially printed stylish shoes on them; it happened because the handwritten mailing information gestured toward nurturing an important relationship.

beautiful, effective tools increase satisfaction from a task

Over the last year or so, I’ve been slowly teaching a friend different mending techniques. At a craft boutique I found a pair of unicorn-shaped sewing scissors—the blades form the horn—made of iridescent purple metal, i.e. this person’s aesthetic preferences precisely expressed in a highly useful object.

correctly identifying someone’s taste can be an expression of love

For my birthday this year I received a pair of earrings made from CHUNKS OF PAINT THAT HAVE PEELED OFF THE BERLIN WALL BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY LAYERS OF GRAFFITI. If you’ve read darn near any edition of Bombazine, you know that I love things made from other things, especially those that might have been deemed “waste” material. And if you’ve met me in real life, you have likely also learned that I love embellishment. I appreciate the earrings as jewelry, but what makes them extra special is how seen I feel by this articulation of a series of observations about me over time.

Admittedly, this level of gift-giving is pretty advanced. The two examples above are from two-decade friendships. But if you intend to give someone a physical object, it may cultivate your attention to reflect on questions such as these:

• What colors and textures are prevalent in this person’s clothing and personal belongings? And do they show up mixed together or separately? Are text or logos often present? If there are patterns, on what scale do they appear?

• Do they focus more on form or function? Will this person tolerate needless pockets on a garment if they look cool? Or are they slightly offended that such pockets even exist?

• Does this person like renderings of the hobbies or media they like? Not every gardener wants a shirt with a trowel-and-glove print. Another way to phrase this line of inquiry is: are they a fan who likes merch?

• How do they think about where something came from and/or how it was made?

a physical gift can function as an act of service

At the Missoula home materials reuse store, I was browsing the lighting aisle when I remembered that a friend had broken the glass cover on a ceiling light in her apartment with a broom, so I picked up a replacement for about five bucks.

This approach does run the risk of being patronizing (proceed with extreme caution if you want to give someone a cleaning implement of any kind.) To successfully solve a problem with a gift, you want to pick a difficulty that the recipient has told you about (see dryer balls, above) or one that you have witnessed the repercussions of. For instance, I went through a phase of blatantly disregarding the weather (did you know it actually rains more inches per year in New York City than in Seattle?) and arriving at various meet-ups with a friend damp if not drenched. After this happened several times, said friend gave me an umbrella and a poncho from their stash and eventually ordered a cheap rear wheel fender for my bike.

Some People Do Not Want More “Stuff”

Doing a chore that someone does not enjoy or can’t seem to get around to can be a wonderful gift. Because professional car-detailing is pricey, I once gave a friend a “certificate” for my services and then vacuumed and dusted the interior of his car. Another time I “borrowed” a pair of worn-down boots that my roommate had stopped wearing, got them re-soled, wrapped them up and gave them back to her.

Another way to identify gifts for someone who is not materialistic is to make a thoughtful donation on their behalf (again, intention is more meaningful than amount) or think of ways you can save them time, money, or frustration. Do they fly, even infrequently? Give them the funds for TSA Pre-Check. Do they use public transportation? Perhaps a pre-loaded card. Are they a recent college grad? Maybe a year of Costco membership (pending their location & access to a car). Subscriptions that reduce ads on digital platforms can be very thoughtful—improved attention is true gift.

regarding experiences

Consider choosing something the two of you can do together, ideally with an appointed time, such as concert or play tickets. In this way you can not only create a shared memory but you can grant them a reprieve from logistics. Twice I’ve given massage certificates to recipients who I knew wanted massages. One of them never redeemed the gift card and the other took five years to use theirs. If I had just planned a collective spa day or made the appointments myself (with or without their input as to dates—it depends on the relationship), the massages would have happened way sooner!

A Note on Incorporating Values, Not Foisting Them

Did my parents like the coffee filters made of unbleached brown paper instead of dioxin-intensive white fibers that I gave them for Christmas a few years ago? Not really, I don’t think, but they used them because they are not wasteful people and because, given that they raised me, they have a high tolerance for my quirks. I can’t promise I won’t re-up the supply, but I have enough self-awareness to know not to give that present to most other people in my life.

I don’t have a rule for how I source gifts so much as a matrix of principles:

• small businesses & independent vendors > corporations

“I boycott the hell out of Amazon and have for years, and this has not reduced the quality of my life in any way. A lot of what they have on Amazon is also available, used, on Ebay.” —Lisa Sibbett

• repairable & multi-use > single-use / disposable / difficult to fix

• handmade/made by an artist > made in a factory

• secondhand/reused > brand-new, especially if made from synthetic materials (see Back Market for refurbished tech!)

• salvaged/reused/recyclable/organic materials > “virgin” or difficult to recycle/biodegrade/compost material

• in that vein, metal/glass/wood > plastic and wool/cotton/silk/linen > synthetic fabrics

• experience > object (not always true, but worth considering)

• made/sold by women/people of color who are adequately compensated for their work > made/sold by predominantly white/male-owned companies/places that exploit their employees

• locally sourced/made nearby > shipped from afar (when buying a gift for someone in another country, I try to order them something from where they are. The internet is amazing that way!)

The Wrap-Up

I do have a final soap-box stand. Wrapping is an opportunity to add a little bit of art to a gift and augment the pleasure of opening something; it’s also an important threshold for landfill diversion. A lot of wrapping paper and many commercially produced gift bags are not municipally recyclable or require specific disassembly. Divest from the metallic wrapping paper that ends up in the trash!

(and if you receive metallic wrapping paper, try to give it a second life! Another card with wrapping paper flowers)

I save the wrapping materials that come in or I dig stuff out of the recycling bin. In this way I can almost always wrap or ship items in re-used packaging. In my family we use fabric bags that tie shut with cording. You, too, can give someone a gift in a re-purposed grocery bag! That’s the Christmas spirit I believe in.

In solidarity,

Abby