Christmas gifts

My gift guides for the season!

Nov 15, 2024

This week, I thought over and over to myself how thankful I am to be the kind of person who sees necessity in decorating for Christmas early, not waiting until after the Thanksgiving holiday for the mere sake of practicing self-control. But really, I am most thankful for the time it gives me to perfect it, to fiddle with my ornaments until everything is spaced out, colors, shapes, lights. To sit with what I have and contemplate what might need to be added, what might not. To prepare for holiday crafts, like my afternoon activity today of slicing up old wallpaper and wrapping paper to make a chain garland for the front room mantle, imagining Kit helping me make garlands for Christmas one day, too.

This week, I also tried to think of things to tell our moms to surprise Kit with on Christmas…given this baby girl loves most of all to play with Annie’s toys, remotes and charging cords, and bags of M&Ms in the kitchen, the list is very slim. I’ve known for a few months that I wanted to get her a Pottery Barn Anywhere Chair, to carry back and forth from her nursery and the library, where we spend our days. I know she will love to sit in it, pull herself to standing on it, place her toys on it and maybe even mouth the tags on the bottom. One day, I hope she’ll read in it in the mornings, while I have my coffee and read my Bible, starting a routine of quiet and time in prayer, one she can participate in.

But other than that chair, I think I’ll buy a couple books (The Lantern House by Erin Napier for one) and maybe a stuffed animal, because really, Christmas morning will just be fun because it’s her first. She’ll love the wrapping and ribbons most of all, regardless of if we got or anything or not.

One of my earliest Christmas morning memories, sweetly enough, was the year my mom and dad surprised me with my very first American Girl doll. And guess who it was…the precious, wildly smart, blonde and freckled Kit Kittredge. I loved her cardigan and saddle shoes, her typewriter and her newspaper that inspired my first (which for some odd reason, I called it The Ladybug Chronicles, and published it from the upstairs closet of our old flower shop, seated on a barstool surrounded by dusty silk flowers). A few years later, enough time for my parents to save up for another doll that Mom told me “cost a whole tank of gas,” I woke up in sponge curls and a plaid flannel nightgown to another American Girl. This time it was the colonial Elizabeth, with her ringlet curls I learned to french braid with, and the prettiest pink dress I wish I had in my size.

Before I could remember, my grandmother gifted me an introduction to motherhood in my very, very first baby doll, a Bitty Baby named Hannah. She wore a velvet mint onesie, and my mom found me a clunky, real diaper bag with real diapers, a little pink stroller, a motorized swing. Mom loves to tell me how bossy I was as a little mother, asking her to babysit but insisting she was doing it all wrong, despite my still being in diapers myself. Later in my childhood, I was given Bitty Baby twins, Mary and Caleb, and they completed my set of children, two little brunette babies in matching denim.

I also remember one year discovering a box in my parents’ closet, one I kept going back to peek in every time I got a moment alone. The box held the most beautiful Christmas dress I had ever laid eyes on. It had a black, velvet bodice and long sleeves, and then a skirt of flowy white organza. I’m not sure why it was even a secret, but even just thinking about it now, 26 years old, I feel the way I felt catching glimpses of that gown, hidden beneath my dad’s dress shoes. I wore it, I’m sure, on Christmas morning, but mostly, I remember wearing it to my holiday piano concert in the theater with velvet maroon walls and the small, black leather piano benches, my fingers long and shaky.

I think gift giving is one of the most beautiful, intimate gestures of love, one that shows you thought of someone, that you remembered something they said, something the liked, that you know them enough to anticipate something they’d love. The first year Price and I dated, I failed at this…we had only been dating for two months at that point, and I was so scared of doing too much, scaring him away, so I settled on a sun hat from my college bookstore, something he could wear to golf, but also something from his rival university, to be silly and light-hearted. He, however, bought me a pair of Vejas to match Meghan Markle, a card that simply said “Fit for royalty…” And I have never underestimated his gift-giving abilities since.

After we put Kit to bed a few days ago, I wandered through the house, putting things away in cabinets and drawers, back and forth, back and forth down our one hallway, my feet heavy on our old hardwoods. Price came out of the library and asked, “How are we going to do Christmas Eve, when the babies are older?” Meaning, how in the world will Santa Clause be silent, in a house as tiny as this. I thought to myself that we’d just have to figure it out, to work in silence and fits of muffled giggles. Hide gifts at my parent’s house, wrap them late into the night. I thought about the metal ornaments hanging on my childhood tree, with rolled up Christmas lists stuffed inside, and how one day, Kit will make a list for me, baby dolls and flowy dresses and chapter books and typewriters. How we will, very soon, have a baby who waits for us to come get her at the crack of dawn Christmas morning, sweet pajamas and morning breath and joy, that precious, unconfined childlike joy and belief that Santa came.

Here are four gift guides for the holiday season, a mix of big and small, things I use daily and things on my own wish list. I hope you love!

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*Little green hearts on my absolute favorite picks!