A Different Approach to Gift Giving: Giving With Intention

I am a terrible gift-giver.

Every gift I give, I want it to mean something. I can’t just run into a store and grab whatever is near the checkout line. There’s a whole internal checklist running in my head:

• Can I support a local shop?

• Will they actually use this, or will it end up in a drawer?

• Is it unique?

• Does it remind me of them?

  
  

Honestly, I’d rather skip traditional gift-giving altogether and lean into sporadic gifts. The kind where I’m out, I see something that reminds me of you, and I grab it. No pressure. No calendar. Just a connection.

The most recent example? A Martha on a Mantel for a friend. Completely random. Completely her.

Learning to Lean Into Your Own Gift-giving

I have plenty of friends who are excellent gift-givers. The ones who can find the perfect thing on a whim and genuinely love doing it. For a long time, I felt like I needed to return the favor in the same way.

But I’ve learned something important over the years: I need to lean into my gifts and let others lean into theirs.

And that brings me to my gift of the season.

Cinnamon Rolls: My Labor of Love

Let me introduce you to my Christmas cinnamon rolls.

And let me tell you, these are a gift of love.

Every Christmas Eve, I wake up extra early and start the long process:

Getting the milk temperature just right.

Letting the dough rise. Rolling out batch after batch.

Letting it rise again.

Baking.

Frosting.

Delivering them to neighbors and family.

This takes time. 6.5 hours this year.

It takes the effort of waking up early and doing hard work. 

Muscle. (Realized after the third batch that I should probably consider lifting weights. My arms are WEAK.) 

Resources.

And it’s a gift I can give. 

One that I enjoy. 

One that isn’t bought off a shelf.

All of this has made me think about gifts in a bigger way.

You Already Have What You Need

We each have gifts. One God gave us. Every single one of them is different and uniquely ours. And when we use those gifts to love others well, man, what a beautiful thing.

I think we spend a lot of time looking around and envying what we don’t have. The skills. The gifts. The tangible things. We try to buy those things to make ourselves feel whole.

But we’re missing the point entirely.

We already have what we need.

The invitation isn’t to become someone else or give like someone else. It’s to lean into what you can give. And to do it with love.

Want to make your own cinnamon rolls? Here’s the recipe we use every Christmas Eve.