Most people spend Christmas with their family or close friends but some people are not so lucky. Santa’s Secret Service, established in 1985, looks after the seniors who have no family or friends to spend the holidays with. Anonymous donors selflessly provide personalized gifts for individuals 60 years or older who are alone or isolated in the Calgary communities.

Students in early childhood education classes at Keene High made hats, stockings and gift bags for children in the city’s homeless shelters, and the Keene High National Honor Society students decorated, served food and cleaned up at the RISE … for baby and family’s annual holiday party at Keene’s United Church of Christ. The students also made gingerbread men for Santa to distribute.

BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)– With the biggest delivery day of the year for UPS now passed and the delays caused by the recent east coast storm it becomes costly to send something in order for it to arrive before Christmas – and there is no absolute guarantee it will arrive on time.

Joyce Sobczyk, manager of personal shopping for Bloomingdale’s, 900 N. Michigan, says make a list of everyone you need to buy for, their size and hobbies. Stores close early on Christmas Eve so start shopping in the morning. (Bloomingdale’s is open from 8 a.m. until 6 tonight.)

Searching for meaning beyond a price tag, more holiday shoppers are giving custom-made gifts this year.
But adding the personal touch doesn’t mean that gift-givers have to break out the knitting needles, haul out the scrapbook supplies or fire up the oven and start baking. A host of Web sites with names like Zazzle, Blurb and TasteBook are helping people quickly create one-of-a-kind products like clothing, books and jewelry. In some cases, making a custom gift can be as easy as uploading a photo or clicking a mouse. In others, the e-commerce tools shorten what would normally have taken hours of work.

I am not one of those people who finds it more exciting to give than to receive. Perhaps due to the intensive labor of love that my Christmas wish list has always been- items organized by probable giftee, qualified by size, color, and addenumed with sourcing information from roughly my seventh Christmas on- I have rarely been disappointed with a gift. But as I’ve watched others open gifts this holiday season, I’ve noticed that although their faces sometimes register barely controlled precipitous droops of dismay at an egregiously misjudged gift, other times their faces explode in a smile I started itching to elicit, in the way I’d previously itched for, say, Item 15, size small, heather grey, jcrew.com. I began to wonder- what was so great, anyway, about knowing exactly what to get myself? So I set off on search of what made gifting so pleasurable, outside of any sort of pure altruism.

As shopping lists get longer and longer, and gifts get more expensive, Robin Beam, director of education at A.C. Moore, said she noticed her store in Berlin is busy with crafters looking to personalize gifts this year.

Alternative gifting—the purchase of goods or animals for people in struggling economies instead of hard goods for friends and family—is great for those who have everything they need and don’t want more clutter. But what about the folks who can use a regular gift, or those you want to hand a present?