Every year the holidays roll around and you’re faced with an obstacle: how to buy a gift that’s actually worth the money. Especially in a year when costs are rising and consumer spending is down, Canadians want to make sure the money they spend is worth every penny. Plus, nobody wants any more junk.
So we asked our readers: What’s the best bang-for-your-buck gift you’ve ever given or received?
They shared stories of large purchases where splurging was worth it, and things that were small and affordable that brought endless delight.
If you’re still shopping for friends and family, perhaps their experience will inspire how you spend your money this year.
Full-size bevel edged mirror
For my 15th Christmas around 1971, I received a full-sized bevel-edged mirror, from my parents. It probably cost around $40. It was the most thoughtful and surprising gift I had ever received. I had seen it in their closet while snooping, but never guessed it was for me. I had been sewing my own clothes since the age of 7. I would jump on my parents’ bed to check my hem lengths in my mom’s dresser mirror. With six other siblings, gifts were usually the essentials. To my parents, that mirror was more than just essential. I still have that mirror and hem my clothes with it to this day.
– Susan Cunningham
Karen Whitman's turkey decoy, which was given to her by her husband as a Christmas gift.Supplied
Turkey decoy
My husband knew I didn’t like getting conventional gifts. He found a quirky turkey decoy that hunters would use. The salesperson tried to talk him out of it, assuming I’d rather get jewellery or something like that, but he knew me better. I loved it and put it in our garden where I can see it from the kitchen.
– Karen Whitman
Ornaments
The ornaments! Every year my husband, whom I met in 2002 when our children were in their late teens, carefully chooses a special Christmas ornament for each person in our family, which has grown to 13 people including five grandchildren. Each ornament is usually between $20 and $40. The lengths my husband goes to find the perfect one for each person, including driving to Banff, Alta., from B.C. just to go the Christmas store there makes it really special. I love opening the new one each year and hanging the previous years’ as the moments they represent come flooding back.
– Tracey Fellowes Gatto
A KitchenAid stand mixer was a gift that stood the test of time for Jessica Morrison.
KitchenAid stand mixer
When I was in my early 20s and had just graduated from law school, I was working really long hours and didn’t have any money to spare after rent and student loan payments. I couldn’t afford much recreation or gifts, but I loved to bake. After a series of cheap hand mixers died in the middle of a batch of cookie dough, my mom found a crazy sale on a KitchenAid stand mixer at Sears: it was half off and was tax free. A $600 value for $350. Over 15 years, that stand mixer has made countless batches of cookies, many birthday cakes, and its various attachments have served to grind meat for hamburgers and chicken burgers, chop vegetables, and even make ice cream. It was a great investment, and continues to be a prized appliance I still love and use all the time. It was worth every penny.
– Jessica Morrison
House cleaning
Twice we’ve given the gift of paying for a house cleaning for our young adult children who both work and have small children. It costs $150 and we have found it to be a very lovely Christmas present.
– David R. Johnson
Cold hard cash
Children get to the age where they don’t want toys, so we give them cash. The most fun is giving them “cold hard cash.” We freeze loonies and toonies in a lump of ice. It takes a few days to make a lump with the coins distributed throughout, but it makes it more fun than a bill in a card. The children get what they want and the rest of us have a laugh.
– Elizabeth Bishenden
Danielle Crawford's Roomba is a gift she makes use of all the time.Supplied
Roomba vacuum
My husband and I received a Canadian Tire gift card and also contributed some of our own money to purchase the Roomba iRobot model 671 in 2021 for around $300. It’s not inexpensive, and a vacuum goes against feminist ideals, but this is a robot vacuum, it does the work for me! I’m not vacuuming! I appreciate that it saves me so much time, and it’s one chore off my list. It’s a gift I use all the time.
– Danielle Crawford
Australian dollar and U.S. dollars are exchanged.Jason Reed/Reuters
International currency
When my husband retired and we knew we would travel more, so I rolled up a bit of foreign money and tucked into his Christmas stocking, signalling a possible next destination. I intend to turn this into an annual tradition!
– Lori Ciaralli
Coffee mug cover
The gifts I have received that I have appreciated most have not been expensive things but mostly small, very useful articles. For example, I was given a flexible cover for a cup or mug to keep the contents warm. It probably cost a dollar or two but I use it every day.
– Mike Harrop
A photo of Gillian Clare and her mom going to the theatre when she was a teenager.Supplied
Theatre ticket
When I was 16, I was given a theatre ticket to see a show called I On the Sky from a company on tour from Quebec. It was priced at around $18. It is not an understatement to say that seeing the show changed my life. After watching it, I knew that I had to pursue theatre as a profession. As a theatre maker now in Vancouver, the memory of that show serves as my north star. When I am confronted with the costs, logistics and occasional apathy toward theatre, I think of the child (or adult, or senior, or teen) who will see my show, and feel, just maybe, a little bit less alone. That, I think, is a gift worth giving.
– Gillian Clare
Scrapbook
My mother made a scrapbook for my then-fiancé the first Christmas he shared with my family. It was the old-fashioned kind with a leather cover and heavy pages. The first page said: “First she was ours …” In it she chronicled my life, from birth (announcement in local paper, copy of birth certificate, congratulations cards) through elementary school (class pictures, report cards, artwork, awards won), high school (band concerts, school newspaper columns, more report cards, letter from principal on my chronic tardiness). She had obviously sifted through my bedroom waste bin – scrunched up notes from friends were smoothed out and glued in, copies of party invitations I’d sent out including one written on toilet paper, even hidden beneath a small cloth my discarded retainer. Then came my university report card I’d never show them and my outdated day timers. At the end was a page stating: “Now she is yours.”
While that thought didn’t sit well with my feminist thinking, the scrapbook cost my mother more than twenty years of saving mementos of my life, many hours organizing and editing the scrapbook, and quite a few hours gluing it into place. She died a few years ago – but I cherish the scrapbook. It didn’t cost a lot of money but it came imbued with love.
– Pamela Pastachak