For me, gift shopping has to do with the experience. I rarely buy gifts online. I much prefer holiday craft bazaars and going to magical shops like New Moon and Royal Towne Gifts in Randolph, Free Verse Farm Shop in Chelsea, Althea’s Attic Boutique in Montpelier, Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock, a dozen others. Go see the lights in Bethel one night! Lovely.

Books make great presents because they can be re-gifted to friends or donated to charities. I’m currently digging a book by local publisher, Inner Traditions in Rochester, “The Culinary Pharmacy: Intuitive Eating, Ancestral Healing, and your Personal Nutrition Plan.” For the health conscious, crunchy people, and self-improvers on your list, it’s ideal.

For those being tormented one way or another at work, school, or home, let them Snark in the New Year with “The Snark Handbook.” This will arm them with witty zingers. Hilarious. The GIFT of laffs – and verbal self-defense. Sample: “Gee what a terrific party. Later on we’ll get some fluid and embalm each other.” – Neil Simon.

Instead of gift cards to big box stores, try gift certificates at local stores. Even auto parts stores sell them! Your beloveds may want art or art supplies or a haircut or movie tickets or dining … almost any place you can think of sells gift certificates, at the amount you want. It keeps your local economy going and your gifting off the internet, which has sadly destroyed independent shops worldwide. I’ve had stores invent a gift certificate for me on the spot.

I particularly like gifting something to do. Show tickets, a season’s pass or gym membership, or a class such as ceramics, stained glass, or any of the many offerings at the White River Craft Center. Piano lessons, horseback riding, Reiki … any class at all. What about a blank book you give to a retired person, in which they can chronicle their life? Gifts of fun! And really, what’s more fun that reading your local newspaper? A subscription to the Herald … perfect.

If you’ve written a book or are thinking of it, or know someone who did and want to give them a monumental gift … might I suggest the audio book recording maven in Shelburne: Voice Over Vermont. She’s super relaxed, nice, and smart, with the coziest setup (or she can direct you from your home or local studio). Not only is she affordable compared to other, less-excellent companies, she is a fantastic director. Which I promise you need. It’s far harder to read out loud than you think.

And at the pinnacle, there’s the most precious gift, the gift you made yourself.  Pen a song or poem or cartoon for someone. You can gift food, knits, cuttings from your favorite plants, bathtub gin, art, or anything else you’ve created. I’ve concocted uneven pot holders, crooked scarves, sketchy pillow cases, sorry-looking hats, childlike tree ornaments, lopsided ceramics — and exquisite deodorant. Each was well received. For the person who has everything, a calendar with meaningful photos is fantastic. You can now order them easily online (and in some pharmacies), but for years I made mine with actual photos glued carefully into a calendar sold for this purpose at the Pink Smock Shop at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital. When you come across these years later, they blow your bean, pleasantly. Tip: hospital gift shops can always use your money.

Broke? Gift a service you will provide with a homemade, redeemable coupon. Surely I read this in a women’s magazine in 1982. It can be a massage, errand, snow shoveling, planting in the spring, or, if you’ve completely lost your mind, oven cleaning. Maybe you could teach someone how to do something. Show them how to make a Manhattan? You can use a low-end whiskey like The Famous Grouse as long as you use top shelf cherries, like Luxardo Italian. Boom.

Honestly, I think the most enchanted part of winter in my childhood was quietly shoveling people’s driveways in the dark while they were still at work, so they’d come home to a nice surprise. Heavily influenced in youth by the “Brownie Scout Handbook,” wherein at some point elves called Brownies did tasks for people (cobbling shoes?) anonymously at night without asking for any thanks (a true mitsvah!), I felt my secret shoveling a kind of sacred mischief. I relished every pass with the shovel, every sweep of the steps. It used to snow more back then, the big white fluffy kind I call “Hollywood snow” falling gently on my eyelashes and cheeks as I did my good deed. I shoveled out a Danish widow who worked long hours at the United Nations. A woman who’d fallen and had her jaw wired shut to heal. An elderly couple. A woman who championed, way ahead of her time, the rights of – and employment opportunities for – her intellectually disabled daughter and others like her. For these kindhearted and hardworking neighbors, it was the least I could do. I hope that today kids get off screens long enough to experience the unspeakable joy that comes from doing a good deed. And knowing their neighbors.

Funny, I’d forgotten entirely about all that. Also this: a decade ago I was panicking on my way back to Vermont on Amtrak. A massive storm had struck the east coast and I had to roll my luggage from the Randolph train station to my house in snow that the plows could not keep up with, a good quarter mile. The train had arrived late. It was dark and the snow was really coming down. I dreaded the final lap of wading through two feet of accumulated driveway snow with my suitcase in my arms like a giant baby … until, sweating, I approached my dimly lit home, stopped to catch my breath, and looked up. What had happened here? What was going on? Why, someone had snow-blown my driveway! I was exclaiming out loud, crying with thankfulness at this great kindness. I don’t generally believe at all that what goes around comes around, but in this case it did.

Well, Dear Reader and your Humble Columnist better get a move on. As you approach the clubhouse turn of holiday shopping, I do hope this has been of some use, or at the least entertaining. Because sometimes in the midst of all the holiday prep and partying, it’s best to don your gay apparel and just … sit down and read the paper. Good prep, good holidays, and good new year to all.

Ann Aikens is an author, columnist, speaker, and blogger. Her darkly comical book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2023, her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find events and bookshops at annaikens.com; her blog is uppervalleygirl.com.