Christmas Gifts for Family You Will Not See This Year
Send one good thing to the household rather than four small things to four people, send it early enough to land before the week gets busy, and write a proper note. The parcel is standing in for you, and one shared gift on the table does that better than a pile of individual ones.
Interstate, overseas, or simply not making the drive this year: the logistics are the same and so is the decision. Our Christmas hampers are built for the shared version, and the rest of this is how to choose and time one.
One gift or four
The instinct is to buy for each person, because that is what you would do if you were there handing things over. At a distance it works less well. Four small gifts cost more, arrive in more boxes, and are individually smaller than one thing that is genuinely good.
One shared gift also does something four cannot: it sits in the middle of the table on the day and gets opened by everyone at once, which is the closest a parcel gets to being a person in the room. Our gifts to share are grouped for exactly that.
The exception is young children, who do not care about a shared anything and will remember whether there was something with their name on it. If there are kids in the house, one shared gift for the household and something small and individually addressed for each child is the split that works.
What survives the trip and the heat
An Australian Christmas is the hardest posting conditions of the year. Parcels sit in hot vans, then on doorsteps, in the middle of summer, during the busiest fortnight Australia Post has.
The practical effect is that chocolate is a difficult December gift in most of the country, and anything that needs a fridge is not a posting proposition at all. Savoury travels better: biscuits and crackers, preserves and relishes, nuts, good coffee and tea, and things in jars and tins that do not mind a warm afternoon. Our mid-range hampers are where most family gifts of this kind land.
None of that is a promise about any particular item, and we are not going to make one, because what happens to a parcel in transit depends on the weather and the route. Choose in categories that are robust by nature and you take the question off the table.
Timing it to land before the day, not on it
Aim for the week before. A hamper that arrives on 23 December competes with a household that is already cooking, cleaning and collecting people from airports. One that arrives a week out gets unpacked properly, put somewhere visible, and looked forward to.
Same-day dispatch is available on orders placed before 1pm AEST/AEDT on weekdays, excluding public holidays, and everything travels at standard Australia Post rates for your address, with no handling markups. December is the one month when the delivery leg is genuinely slower than the rest of the year, and it is slower by more in regional areas than between capitals.
The cut-off dates are the thing to work back from, and they are confirmed by Australia Post rather than by us. When they are set they go on our Christmas shipping page, which is the one place to check rather than working from last year's numbers.
The note is doing the work
This is the part people rush and the part that gets kept. A card that says Merry Christmas from all of us has said nothing. A card that names what you are missing, that you will not be there for the swim on Boxing Day or your mother's terrible trifle, and when you will next see them, is the reason the gift is being sent at all.
Write it as though you were saying it across the table, because that is what it is standing in for. Every order includes a free personalised gift card. Keep it to a few sentences, name people specifically, and resist the urge to apologise for the whole paragraph.
If you are the one who is away
The awkward version is when you are the one who has moved and the family is together without you. A large gift in that situation can read as compensation, and can make the absence louder rather than softer.
Something modest and shared is the better instinct, sent early, with a note that treats the absence as a fact rather than a failure. If you can, arrange to be on a call when it is opened. The parcel is a prop for that conversation, not a substitute for it.
Where to start
Decide whether it is one gift or one plus the kids, choose something robust, and send it the week before rather than the week of. Our Christmas hampers are grouped so you can shop by household rather than by person, delivery runs Australia-wide, long-distance gifting covers the year-round version of this problem, and Christmas hamper ideas is the wider guide behind it. Everything is hand-packed in Australia and sent Australia-wide, so the distance is our problem rather than yours.
Frequently asked questions
What do you send family you will not see at Christmas?
One good thing for the household rather than several small things for individuals. A shared gift gets opened on the day by everybody at once, which is the closest a parcel gets to being a person in the room, and it is better value than four separate parcels. The exception is young children, who will notice whether something had their name on it, so a shared gift for the house plus something small and individually addressed for each child is the split that works in a family with kids.
How early should an interstate Christmas gift be sent?
Aim to arrive the week before, not the week of. December is the slowest month of the year for delivery and it is slower again for regional addresses. Work backwards from the Australia Post cut-off dates rather than from a normal-month estimate, and add a few days on top. We publish the confirmed cut-offs on our Christmas shipping page once Australia Post sets them, and that is the page to check rather than repeating last year's dates. Same-day dispatch is available on orders placed before 1pm AEST/AEDT on weekdays, excluding public holidays.
Does an Australian summer affect what you can send?
Yes, more than distance does. A parcel posted in December travels in heat and may wait on a doorstep at the end of it, so anything needing refrigeration is not a posting proposition and chocolate is a harder call in most of the country than it is in June. Savoury categories handle it better: crackers and biscuits, preserves, nuts, coffee and tea, and things in jars and tins. Choose by category rather than by hoping, and the weather stops being a variable you have to think about.