Holiday gift-giving is easier when recipient becomes involved

Christmas is 10 days from now and I haven’t really started my Christmas shopping. My wife has given me a couple of ideas for gifts, but has yet to say what she might really want. If it’s a catalog item, I fear it might already be too late to order.

Several years ago, my wife and I decided that rather than exchange gifts we thought were great, but which the other person might be less than thrilled with, we would exchange lists of present ideas we each wanted, needed or could use. The buyer was free to purchase all, some, or only one of the listed gifts, pending price and availability.

I have always tried to get everything on my wife’s list. She has done the same for me. This has worked quite nicely in that I have gotten stuff I either wanted or could use and then actually used it. The number of items I have which I only dust once in a while, rather than use, has been significantly reduced with this approach.

I can be a problem to buy for. Over the years, I’ve managed to accumulate pretty much all the stuff I figured I needed to hunt and fish my way. My tastes also tend to be a bit eccentric and many of the items I’m interested in are either specialty items or are listed in the many dealer catalogs I receive for my small business. I can purchase them at dealer’s prices but my wife needs to go the retail route, assuming we can even find the item locally.

In years past, she has wanted to do the buying because she preferred to give an actual gift rather than money to buy an item. I always felt bad about the extra money she spent for retail when I could have gotten it wholesale. In the last few years, however, she has decided that if I wanted something from one of my catalogs, I am to just order it and she’ll give me the money. She saves some bucks and I get what I wanted or needed.

My wife, in turn, isn’t too hard to shop for. She generally likes gift cards to various stores and that makes my life a lot easier. She gets what she wants and can go pick out either the perfect outfit or jewelry or some electronic gadget she’s had her eye on. The particular stores she mentions change from year to year, but a gift card has made shopping for her relatively easy.

If you decide to go the gift card route, just make sure the recipient actually uses it within whatever time frame exists for the gift. I hate to give anybody a chunk of money for nothing.

This year, my list of requests to Santa reads like this: two shotgun choke tubes to complete a set for the new over-and-under I purchased earlier this year, a set of binocular covers to protect my binocs when I’m out hunting, and a cover for the powerhead on my ice-fishing auger.

I have only ever seen the particular binoc covers I want in an outdoor catalog. They don’t cost much more than I could get them for through the business, so my wife buying them herself isn’t bad. I’ve ordered the choke tubes and another couple of items as part of a business order I recently made, so that’s covered. The auger powerhead cover I have only seen in a distributor’s catalog. I’ll look around locally and see if anybody has one and what the price is. Otherwise, that item will go on a “to be ordered” list for the next business order to that particular distributor.

I hadn’t really planned to write about how we buy presents around my house, but rather about some suggested outdoor gift ideas for this Christmas season. I guess I have presented a few ideas, so you can go from there. If in doubt, a gift card from your outdoor person’s favorite outdoors store is never a bad approach.

I would also encourage you to purchase locally if possible. The current economics we’re all living with can be tough for a local business. Save money when you can, but buy as much as you can locally too. Everybody benefits when that happens.

While we’re all getting caught up in the festive season and buying gifts at the best prices available, I would also encourage you to remember our service personnel overseas. Either put together a gift package and send it off if you know someone specifically or donate some money to one on the many organizations that do that exact thing for the military in general. Your generosity here creates another win-win for everybody involved.

Finally, you should also keep in mind why we celebrate Christmas each year. To many in today’s society, the birth of Jesus Christ is nothing more than a historical footnote. However, to true Christians, His birth was necessary to fulfill the prophesies about the eternal salvation of mankind – only the Easter celebration ranks higher in importance. Have a Merry Christmas and enjoy the presents Santa will place under your tree.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.