How To Be The Best Gift Getter In The Land - And The Best Gift Giver This Year, For Certain!

I am not the best at gift giving, so here are the top five gifts for other people to get me. And a simple tip to make your present the most beloved one they get this year - guaranteed!

I, like probably you, am seeing gift guides every place I look (it seems even way more rampant this year, but that's likely because I'm spending more time on Substack, where there are loads of them addressing the most varied gift requirements and from all different specific giver vantage points). I am inconsistent as a gift giver myself. Not inconsistent in terms of how good the gifts are, but inconsistent in that I only give gifts when I have the perfect gift for that person at that time. So a lot of holidays, I don't give anything. It is sporadic. But they are good when they are good. (I just realized that is a metaphor for me in relationships, which we could talk about another time.) I’m sorry.

All this focus on gift-giving, though, made me think about the best gift-givers I have known and how they do it. It also created a segue for me to recommend my favorite gift for anyone to give this year (you will be so popular when you give this gift, no doubt, you'll see).

Gift-Giving Role-Model #1: Gwyneth

The best gift giver I have witnessed has to be Gwyneth. That sounds obvious because she's Gwyneth, but I discovered it via a gift that she gave our mutual friends when they moved into their new place years and years ago, one that still stands out to me as the most specifically thoughtful present ever. It was a massive set of dinner plates and across each one, in big bold letters, was the first name of one of their friends, who would presumably be coming over to eat off of them over the great long time they would be in this home and using this great gift. It was always a joy to go there and see who was on your plate that day, and to have your name be eaten off of too. It was a housewarming gift and is most perfect in that category, but I think it’s a great present for any time. Neither the giver nor the receivers in this case can recall the exact vendor, and when I looked on Etsy, there are varieties of plates with people's names across them, but none in this style exactly. So I would recommend working with one of those plate makers but designing your own. Or you may like one that's already available.

Gift-Giving Role-Model #2: Courteney

Court, as I and many of her friends refer to Courteney Cox, has been one of the best gift-givers I've known since we became great friends more than 25 years ago. One of the first things she did was to mail me a surprise Blackberry (back when they were these hefty little black boxes that you carried around and all they were used for was texting the few other people you knew who also had Blackberries). She gave it to me as I was on my way to a retreat alone for a week, so that we could keep in touch throughout it while I upheld the spa's silent rules and maintained the mandated media fast (a media fast has always been the hardest type of fast for me to achieve - although I've never tried a food fast except once as a teenager at a fundraiser when I threw up because of it so I can't really compare to that type of fast). How sweet and smart and so thoughtful. That Blackberry was the most frequent way she and I communicated for a year or more and I got so good and fast at typing on that thing because of it. I only had a couple of contacts on there anyway - I think maybe three at my peak – so pretty much every time I went to look at it, it would be another note from Court. A joy.

Starting then and for years afterward, Court would also annually give me and other friends packages full of notepads with our names printed on top. They were a little different each year and I still have some saved from past years and I use them all the time for taking notes and making lists and leaving messages for people and just everything. Here's one example from a batch Court gave me. They were so plentiful (a gold box of maybe 15 or so notepads?) that you didn't feel you had to be precious with using them. It's amazing, in this day, how useful it still is to have a pad to write things down on - and one that can also turn into a kind of nice formal-looking stationary if you want to use it that way.

I will make it easy for Court this year, because I know she has access to this gorgeous stuff and, as much as I love everything from the brilliant HomeCourt and her own signature fragrance, my absolute favorite scent of all time is the one she worked on with smart darling Coco, called Cocomoi. I highly recommend this as a gift for anyone – especially me.

Gift-Giving Role-Model #3: Mom

Third in this not really hierarchical (I am just listing them, because I'm holding all of this in my brain as I write it out and it's easier to remember them if I number them), but somewhere near the very top in my ranking of amazing gift givers throughout my life would be my mom. She always gets me exactly what I want and need. Ever since she and my dad handmade me a dollhouse with all the little furniture in it and everything (they were both artists, so creating something like this was right up their alley – and it was really intricate and well constructed, from what I remember) for a Christmas when I was maybe in the single digits of age and I never once played with it, my mom has given me the least showy gifts that have gotten the most use over time.

Whether it's new sheets or gloves, or a certain kind of cutting knife or pan, nothing is ever too boring. The way a lot of people give gifts (my dad was just like this – and so was my ex) makes it pretty clear that they are giving to demonstrate how magnanimous they are rather than giving something that will actually serve the person they're giving it to. This is the humble opposite of that.

I am currently still thinking of the thing I need the most this year and I know Mom will get it for me. Sometimes she'll get two if she knows it's something that you want a backup for or that will eventually wear out or that you will need a refill of. That's the best – a simple gift from someone who really just wants to make your life easier and better. Her presents always do that, and I end up using them for years and years and years and thanking her in my mind every time. Sometimes I even do it in a random note, because, as I said, I am the best gift receiver. And I have the perfect personalized stationary to do it on!

Gift-Giving Role-Model #4: Charlotte

I awkwardly made Charlotte and her boyfriend Jack pose with the gift they gave me so I could take this picture and have more faces rather than just products in this story. They are great sports.

The other gift giver I am always so amazed by is my daughter, Charlotte (if you ever think that I'm going to do any kind of best-of list and not have her included on it, you will be forever wrong on that). She doesn't base it around holidays, but gives me exactly what I want but haven't gotten for myself – and she does it when I most want it throughout the year. It's always a surprise and always something I want to use right away. Just the other day, she (and her boyfriend Jack) handed me a box with these little electrolyte vials in it that I had tried when the three of us were on vacation. I had loved them so much and thought they worked so much better than any other type of electrolytes I had tried. It's basically seawater scooped up in a little glass vial, and it tastes like it. But they knew how much I loved that little vial and the ritual of breaking the glass to guzzle it down (you put an end in your mouth and break the other end of the glass when it's up in the air - creating the same effect as shotgunning a beer can) and there was only one there in the hotel room to try. So they found them in bulk and got me this box of thirty of them. Note that I have been taking a vial once a day since I got them and I swear my skin looks and feels softer than ever now that I am regularly downing seawater. Thank you always, Charlotte! Thank you, Jack!

This is what's in the vials I am shotgunning these days - an amazing gift. Note that we never look into that dumb side effects question. Live life!

Gift-Giving Role-Model #5: You

Now for the self-serving present that I genuinely think is the best present you could give anyone this year. It’s a perfect Sassy T-shirt with profits going to the two best causes.

When we did that special giveaway offering the limited run of Sassy T-shirts with my signature on them to the first 200 longterm subscribers, they went so fast it was thrilling. (Just knowing that Sassy readers are still alive at this point – and capable of using the Internet, all of us having made that transition together – is thrilling.) I mean, even better than an anal upgrade! (Semi-inside joke from you brilliant commenters that I refuse to let die.) Then you all started requesting the option to buy your own T-shirts, or to buy them for other Sassy people, even if you were already long-term subscribers. So I now offer you, barely in time for Christmas (I often give gifts late also – you can pretend that we messed up the mailing and that that's why it was late or whatever you want. I find that no one actually cares about the timing of a gift and that sometimes it is more exciting to get a gift when you aren't inundated with others, but back to the gift….):

The newly (just now) available Sassy t-shirts! They aren’t signed, but they are pink-on-pink and soft, and if you want to know how good they look and feel, the readers who won them in the giveaway can vouch for that. The shirts are available for $28, which is the best price we could do while also leaving room for the profits to go to three highly important causes:

Planned Parenthood and Reproductive Freedom For All (which I still refer to as NARAL - the first charity I ever donated to)

Paying Worthy Writers

Get the shirt here.

I had this vision a while ago that people would be walking around everywhere wearing Sassy t-shirts (the way you so frequently see Thrasher t-shirts – or even Friends t-shirts, though I don't predict these will be quite as huge a trend as that one – so don't worry about that either). But since the election, when Sassy and everything we championed and stood for there feels more needed than ever, it only makes sense for you and all the trend-setting statement-making people in your life to wear a Sassy shirt ASAP.

The other dream we all have at AJPT is to be able to pay our writers well for their incredible stories. So that’s where the other half of the profits will go.

I really don't like the way this is tied on the side here and also still has the creases from being in the box. But it does give the correct impression that you can tailor these and style them however you want to. Chop them into a V-neck, chop off the sleeves, do whatever you want because the Sassy message is strong and will come through regardless of the styling. As evidenced here with this side-tie action.

Go to the link above to order one or more. (I am giving them to 28 people myself and am ordering today right after I post this for you.) So let the shopping, abortion accessibility and writer paying commence! Happy holidays!!

Love,

Jane

PS I never followed up on the promise I made in the headline about being the best gift getter. Here are my two tips for that that have always worked wildly well for me and for other people I have seen utilize them:

First of all, no matter what the gift is, show - in person or in writing or in a voicemail or whatever – that you're at least somewhat surprised. Even if it's the thing that you knew they were getting you, you can be surprised that it actually happened the way you thought it would.

Second thing is that of course you say thank you as soon as possible, but the key is that you don't just say it right when you receive the present. You remind the giver how grateful you are and how much you love that gift months and even years later. Whenever it occurs to you or whenever it is relevant. It works! And it’s nice! Like you in your beautiful, pink, Sassy statement t-shirt!