It’s less than two weeks to Christmas and I still have most of my Christmas shopping to do. Other than finding time to shop, my biggest problem is that I have no idea what to get anyone. And the biggest reason I don’t know what to get anyone? None of us actually need anything.

This seems to be the case for most. Today we can buy everything we need ourselves. It’s there with a click of a button or swipe of a credit card. We don’t have to wait for holidays and birthdays anymore.

I grew up in a very small town and the few toys to be had could be found at the local hardware store. I would go in there and gaze longingly at them all, wishing they were mine. 

Like every kid in the 70s, getting the Sears and JCPenney’s toy catalogs was one of the highlights of the Christmas season. My sister and I would pour through them over and over, circling the toys we wanted and dreaming about finding them under the tree. Deciding what we wanted wasn’t a decision to be made lightly, so circled items often had a big X over them as we found something we wanted even more.

The best gift I ever received came when I was four or five years old. Although there were dolls, there weren’t any extra clothes or accessories you could buy for them, so whatever they came with was what you were stuck with. But part of the joy I found in playing with dolls was dressing and undressing them. In my imagination, they were real. And like any real person they needed to have more than one outfit to wear.

My mom used to sew a lot, and that year she made a bunch of doll clothes to give to my female cousins for Christmas. They were wonderful, miniature dresses and pajamas, all with snaps so they were easy for little fingers to get on and off.

I was so jealous of those clothes. I begged my mom to make me some too, after all, she’d used my dolls as models to make sure the clothes would fit!

She told me she didn’t have time to make more and I would have to wait until after Christmas. I was devastated. Remember how long time was when you were a kid? How waiting always felt like an eternity? It felt like my dolls would never have any new clothes. 

Imagine my surprise on Christmas Day when, after watching my cousins excitedly open their presents, I opened one to find it stuffed full of my mom’s homemade doll clothes. She’d been planning on giving them to me all along.

I was overjoyed. It was a Christmas miracle! As soon as we got home from my grandparents’ house that day I grabbed my dolls and started playing. I was in heaven.

Back to my current dilemma over what to buy members of my family for Christmas. I realize it’s really not that big of a dilemma after all. What matters is the thought behind the gift, not how much it cost or if it’s the latest, greatest thing. 

Today we can buy just about anything we want whenever we want it. It’s all available and we can have it immediately. Although that’s incredible, it’s also made us, and our kids, immune to actually having to wait for something. We’ve lost the feeling of anticipation. That loss has taken away much of the magic of gift giving. Most kids today will never feel that same sense of joy that I felt over a simple, handmade gift. 

The best gifts are the ones that come from the heart. Although I don’t have many of my old dolls any longer, I still have most of those wonderful clothes.