“We often give ourselves this challenge of being like, ‘What is the gift that only I could give them? What is the gift that proves I know them so well?’ And that’s kind of impossible,” says Erica Cerulo, who runs the recommendation-filled A Thing or Two podcast and newsletter with her business partner, Claire Mazur. Before you open a single browser tab, take a minute to remember that a gift doesn’t have to cause absolute emotional devastation (in a good way) in order to be successful. Whether or not you’re in a position to buy a $10,000 cocktail shaker, it’s remarkably easy to start spiraling about finding the perfect gift for someone. What’s important is matching the right thing to the right person.” Not every gift has to be life-changing, and a meaningful gift doesn’t have to cost a lot of money “It can be a Tootsie Pop or a $10,000 diamond-encrusted cocktail shaker. “I’ve always believed that literally anything on earth, any object, any piece of trash, anything you find in a store, can be a perfect gift,” says Helen Rosner, a New Yorker staff writer who publishes an annual food-themed gift guide that is somehow both deranged and genuinely useful. In the interest of merely learning how to give better presents, I turned to several experts in the arts of gift-giving and etiquette, who shared their tactics and frameworks for gathering ideas and getting in a creative mindset. Is transforming myself into the best gift-giver of all time too much to ask? Probably. This holiday season, I am out for blood, and by blood, I mean really good presents. I do believe that intention matters more than execution with gifts - that it doesn’t really matter what you give someone, as long as you put thought and love into it - but sometimes it would be nice to get a do-over. He had worked on it for months, and the image illustrated my favorite Google search: “ owls kissing.” (Saccharine, I know, but I dare you to find me anything cuter.) Astronaut ice cream would have been an amazing present if given on a random Tuesday, but the occasion and the wild discrepancy between our gifts was hilarious and vaguely horrifying. The problem is that his gift for me was an all-timer, a miniature painting that he had commissioned from an artist who specializes in painstakingly detailed watercolors. He loves freeze-dried ice cream, which you rarely see in the wild outside of science museums, and I had gotten a comical number of packages. A few years ago, I bought for my partner what I thought was a perfect anniversary gift: a bulk order of astronaut ice cream. It’s a special kind of agony to realize, while exchanging gifts with someone, that they got you something way, way better than what you got them.
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