Christmas is Coming

I get in this panic every year - Christmas is coming and I have NO IDEA what to buy for people.  I love to give personal gifts that show some thought.  And I think people appreciate that. Well, either I have become totally thoughtless or we all have so much stuff that there are no ideas left! And there is all that pressure from Oprah!!

Catalogs arrive - cheese baskets, a year of fruit, breads of the world.  My experiences with these are lactose intolerance, more fruit than anyone can possibly eat or moldy bread.  But they LOOK like such good ideas.  One thing I DID get that was a big hit was popcorn tins.  The big ones with three kind of popcorn in them.  Of course, we had our favorites and ate them at different rates so that part way through, the popcorn shifted and we ended up with cheddar crackerjack, but it was good. 

Gift cards are good but I worry that it shows a lack of imagination on my part.  Last year in a desperate attempt to give something to my sister's grandkids that they wouldn't get from Santa, I settled on gift cards to a major toy store, which I was sure would upset the kids parents since Santa is so generous.  And honestly, I thought it was one of the dumbest things I ever did.  BUT - at the end of their Christmas break from school, they kids were so proud to tell me what they chose for themselves on a snowy day.  One of the little boys chose a $2.00 plastic truck.  He told me that he "shopped and shopped and thought and thought and decided that it was the one I really wanted and I bought it all by myself."  I loved that.