Christmas Gifts for Couples That Are Still Around Next December

Why most couples gifts end up in a drawer

Nothing in the drawer was a bad gift. It was aimed at the wrong thing, and the misses follow a few patterns.

• The theme instead of the memory. Mr. and Mrs. mugs, his and hers towels, a sign with your last name on it. They say you are a couple, which you both knew already. Nothing on them is about the two of you in particular.
• The gift built for the unwrapping. Date night dice, a scratch-off bucket list poster. Wonderful for four minutes on Christmas morning, and then they need a follow-through that January rarely has room for.
• The gift for one of you, labeled for both. The espresso machine one of you wanted, the new television. Welcome, and still a household purchase with a bow on it.
• The gift that is an instruction. A fitness tracker, a cookbook for the one who does not cook. Whatever the intention, it arrives as a suggestion to improve, on the one morning that should be about liking them as they are.
• The gift that needs a new habit. The couples journal with three entries in it. A shared hobby rarely starts from a box: start the hobby, and give the equipment after the third time.

The four kinds of gift that last

Everything that reliably survives past January falls into one of four groups, and none of them depends on the budget.

1. A memory. Something that holds a moment only the two of you were in: a place, a photo, a meal, a sentence.
2. An object used together. An upgrade to something you already share every day, so it gets used, and remembered, on an ordinary Tuesday in January.
3. An experience. An evening with a date already on it. Couples have plenty of objects and very few booked evenings.
4. A keepsake. A record of the two of you as you are this year, and the only kind of gift that gains value with every year that passes.

The fourth group is where we work, so we will say where it fits and where it does not. If you would rather look before reading on, you can see the two of you drawn, free, from one photo.

Which gift fits the two of you

The four kinds are not equally right for every couple. Where you are together this year changes what lands, and it is usually easier to find your own row than to read another list of thirty ideas.

Two rows can be true at once, and then the stricter one wins: a couple married for years with a baby at home wants the babysitter before they want the cabin. If your row points at a keepsake, our personalized Christmas gifts for couples start with a free drawing of the two of you, so you can skip it if the likeness is not there.

A memory: a detail only the two of you would understand

The most kept gifts in this group cost very little. What they need is attention, and a little of it in October beats a lot of money in December.

• A photo nobody has printed. Most couples have thousands of pictures on a phone and none on a wall. Choose the one from a day that mattered, not the best-looking one, and frame it properly.
• The place, not the star map. Star maps are popular because they are easy to order, and they work when the night itself is the story, the proposal or the first kiss on the porch. Otherwise a print of the street or the diner where it started says more.
• The recreated first. The first meal you cooked together or the first song you danced to in the kitchen, recreated on an evening in December and announced with a card.
• A letter about this year. Not a love letter in general: this year, in detail. What they did during the bad week in March, the thing they say every morning. Specific beats eloquent.

The letter is the gift people are most afraid of writing and most grateful to receive. It does not need to be long or well written, and nobody else in the world could give it.

An object you will both still be using in January

The question here is simple: will both of you touch it in the second week of January? If it needs a special occasion, it is heading for the drawer.

• An upgrade to a shared habit. The blanket you fight over on the couch, the two mugs for the morning coffee, the sheets. A better version of something you already use together gets noticed every day.
• The first ornament of a series. Buy one this year that marks something specific, and add one every Christmas after. In ten years the tree is a record of the relationship.
• Something for the kitchen you both cook in. Not a gadget for a dish nobody makes, but a better version of the pan that does the Sunday breakfast, or a proper board for the bread you always buy on Saturday.
• A game for two that takes twenty minutes. Long games stay in the closet. A short one that fits between dinner and bed gets played on a Wednesday, which is the whole point.

One way to find the right object is to walk through an ordinary weekday in your head, from the alarm to the lights going out, and notice every moment the two of you touch the same thing. The worn one, the one you both complain about, is usually the gift.

The ornament breaks the rule that themed gifts fail, for one reason: it comes back out of the box every year. Anything that returns every December gets more valuable instead of less, and that is most of the secret of the gifts couples keep.

An experience: booked, not promised

An experience is the easiest gift to promise and the one that most often fails to happen, because a voucher is a to-do and a date on the calendar is a present.

• A night away within driving distance. Dates chosen, room booked, the sitter already asked if there are children. None of the planning falls on the other person.
• A class you will both be bad at. Pottery, dancing, something difficult to cook. The evening you spend being hopeless at it together is the story you tell afterward.
• Twelve envelopes, one date a month, with the first three already booked. A jar of undated ideas becomes a jar.

The weakness of an experience is that there is nothing to unwrap on Christmas morning. Put something physical in the box: the printed reservation, a map with the route drawn on it, the key to the cabin. It matters more than it should.

A keepsake: the two of you, this year

This is the group that gains value every year, because the two of you, as you are this Christmas, will not come around again. The first home, the year before children, the year you finally got the dog: they feel ordinary at the time, and they are not.

• A photo book of the year, if what you want is your actual year, trip by trip. It needs an evening of choosing photos, which is the step that slips.
• A drawn or painted portrait. Goes on a wall and never gets thrown away. Commission it by early November.
• A letter to be opened next Christmas, and another written then. By the fifth one it is a series.
• A storybook with both of you drawn in. The one we make, limits included.

Ours is called Under the Mistletoe. You send one photo of the two of you, we draw you both as characters, and those same two faces are on all thirteen spreads of a Christmas that goes the way Christmas really goes: the tree that leans, chosen out of four hundred straight ones, the lights that went back in the box in one neat coil and came out as one knot, the present that is quite obviously an umbrella, and the mistletoe somebody keeps standing under by accident.

What it is not: your specific year. The story and the scenes are ours, the same for every couple who picks this title. What makes it yours is three things: your two faces, your names in the words, and the last page, where you write the dedication and we print it word for word. If you want your actual memories, the photo book is the better gift. If you want the two of you, recognizably, in a story you will read aloud every December, this is the one.

We make the same kind of book for an anniversary, a wedding, a day out and a baby on the way, on the shelf for the two of you.

What to write in the card, or on the last page

Whatever the gift, the words that come with it are often what gets kept. The card from a gift long since used up is the thing people find in a box years later and read twice. It deserves more than the thirty seconds it usually gets at the checkout.

The same goes for the dedication in our book, which is printed after the story exactly as you type it. It is the one page that is not ours, so it is worth a draft.

• Name one thing from this year. Not "another amazing year together" but the kitchen you painted twice, the drive home in the snow, the week they held everything together. One specific thing beats five general ones.
• Write to them, not about the two of you. "You made this year easy" lands. "We are such a great team" reads like the mug in the drawer.
• Leave room for next year. A line that looks forward, the trip you keep planning or the next Christmas somewhere new, turns a card into the first of a series.
• Read it aloud before you write it down. If a sentence would make you wince spoken across the breakfast table, cut it. Plain beats clever every time.
• Keep it short. Four lines you mean are better than a page you had to fill. A dedication is a page, not a speech.

If you leave the dedication in our book empty, we print a short one of our own with both your names in it. It is fine. The one you write yourself is better, and the preview of the two of you is a good moment to start drafting it, while you can see the book it belongs to.

For a husband, a wife or a boyfriend

The principle does not change with the person. The calibration does, mostly with how long you have been together.

A sentimental Christmas gift for your husband. Men tend to receive gifts about a hobby, and hobby gifts are guesses. What lands is the thing he is rarely given: evidence that you noticed him. The letter about this year, a framed photo from a day he loved, an evening doing the thing he mentioned once in the summer.

Christmas gifts for your wife. Same rule, with one trap: nothing that improves the house, and nothing that improves her. What works is proof of attention, the scarf she stopped in front of in October, or a day with nothing in it that she had to organize.

A Christmas gift for a boyfriend. Calibrate to the months. Early on, keep it light and specific, nothing that asks for a declaration in return. A big keepsake at two months can feel like pressure. At two years it is exactly right.

If the person you are buying for already owns the ears, the mug and the sweatshirt from the parks, the same rule applies with more force, and we wrote a guide to Disney gifts for adults for exactly that person.

The first Christmas together

A first Christmas together gift is really the first entry in something, so choose it for what it will look like in ten years.

• The first ornament, marking something that happened this year rather than a generic first Christmas design, and the start of a series.
• A tradition, invented on purpose. The walk on Christmas Eve, the same breakfast every year. Write it on a card. By the third year nobody remembers it was invented.
• A photo taken on the day, printed. Couples have pictures of everything except their first Christmas morning.

A storybook works here for the same reason the ornament does: it comes out every year, and while Under the Mistletoe is not about your first Christmas in particular, the dedication can be. To see whether you both still look like yourselves once drawn, try it on one photo of the two of you. The preview is free, with no account and no card.

And if the present this year is news rather than an object, several of our ways to tell your husband you're pregnant work very well under a tree.

Giving to a couple, not being half of one

Plenty of people looking for couples gifts are buying for two other people: a son and his wife, friends in their first home, newlyweds. The rules shift slightly.

• One gift for both, and nothing that takes a side. A present for his hobby with a small thing for her tucked in is two gifts, and one of them looks like an afterthought.
• Nothing for display, unless it is a picture of them. Couples who live together have just finished negotiating how the place looks.
• Things they would never buy themselves, that get used up. The good olive oil, proper coffee, a table booked at the place they always mention.

If there are children in the house too, the gift most parents of small children want and never ask for is an evening without them: offer to babysit, on a date written in the card. For the children's side of the tree, we have guides to personalized books for kids and to Christmas gifts for kids who have everything.

A storybook of the two of them works from a parent or a friend too: it needs one clear photo of the couple, and the dedication is then yours to write.

Choosing a photo with both of your faces in it

Every personalized keepsake in this guide, the portrait, the photo book, the storybook, starts from a picture, and for a couple that means two faces instead of one. It is the step that takes longer than anyone expects, so do it first, before you are sure of anything else.

1. Look for faces, not moments. The picture from the best day of the year is often the worst one to work from: sunglasses, a hat, one of you laughing with your eyes shut. A plain photo on the couch usually works better.
2. Both faces clear and roughly toward the camera. A profile or a face half in shadow gives an artist, or anyone drawing you, very little to hold on to.
3. Daylight beats flash. Soft light from a window keeps the features readable. A flash at a party flattens them.
4. Recent, not flattering. A keepsake of the two of you this year should look like you this year, haircut and glasses included.
5. Skip the heavy filters. A filtered face is a slightly different face, and the drawing will follow the filter.

For our book, one photo with both of you in it is enough. We draw each face separately, so you upload the same picture twice, and the preview takes about half a minute for each face, so about a minute for the two of you, free and with no account. If one of you comes out looking like a cousin, try another picture: that is exactly what the preview is for, and a real artist still checks every book before it is printed.

If the gift is a surprise, the photo is the hard part to hide. Most couples already have one on a phone, taken by a friend or at arm's length, and nobody has to know you went looking for it. Try it on the photo you already have before asking anyone to pose.

The dates that matter

Anything personalized is made after you order it, so the number that matters is production plus shipping, and in December both slow down.

• Late October to mid November is the comfortable window for anything personalized: a portrait, a photo book, an engraved ornament, a storybook.
• December 1 for our book. It is printed after you order, and December 1 is the last date we can promise for Christmas. After that we cannot, and we would rather say so here.
• Photos are the slow step. Finding one picture where both faces are clear takes longer than anyone expects.

The Under the Mistletoe page shows real delivery dates before you pay, and the free preview works at any hour: you can see the two of you drawn tonight and decide in the morning.

If you are late anyway, do not panic-buy something worse. Print the cover from the preview and put it in a card with the date the book arrives. Nobody minds a present that turns up on the fifth of January. They mind one bought at a gas station on the twenty-fourth.

A short list, if you want one

The ideas above, sorted by the kind of gift they are.

If you choose only one, choose the one nobody else could have given.