Christmas Gifts for the Person Who Has Everything

Send something consumable, or something shared. The person who has everything buys what they want the week they think of it, so anything you give them to own is competing with their own taste and their own timing. Something that gets eaten, drunk or done together does not compete, because it is gone by January.

What follows is why they got that way, the two categories that still work, the one keepsake exception, and what to spend when nothing you buy will impress them. This is the Christmas version of the problem. The year-round one, where there is no date forcing your hand and you can simply ask, is gifts for someone who says they want nothing.

Why they have everything

It is rarely about wealth. It is usually a settled house, decades of accumulating and a low tolerance for clutter, and the tell is that they buy the small thing they want as soon as they think of it. Nothing sits on a list long enough for you to find it.

Which means the traditional strategy, working out what somebody wants and getting there first, cannot work. They got there first. What is left is the category of thing people do not buy for themselves, and that category is smaller than it sounds. It is made almost entirely of small luxuries and shared occasions.

The consumable argument

Consumables are the strongest answer because they are the one category a self-sufficient person under-buys. People who have everything are often careful about what they spend on themselves day to day, and something very good that gets used up is a genuine treat rather than another object to find a home for.

Aim higher in quality and lower in quantity than you would for anybody else. One excellent thing beats a large assortment, because a large assortment reads as filler to somebody with a developed palate. Our luxury hampers are built that way and our gourmet hampers sit just below them. If they drink whisky, a single-malt whisky gift is the classic version of this, and it has the advantage of being opened slowly.

The shared-experience argument

The second category is anything that turns into an evening. A gift that has to be shared solves the problem twice over: it cannot be added to a collection, and it arrives with your company attached, which is the one thing they cannot buy for themselves.

Christmas is when this is easiest, because there is already a table and already other people around it. In April you would just ask them what they want, and they would say nothing, and you would both be right. In December the occasion does the work, and something opened at a table is not really a possession at all. Our Christmas hampers are the seasonal shape of that, and how to choose a gift hamper goes through matching one to a person.

The one keepsake exception

There is exactly one kind of object worth trying, and it is the one they could not have found. Something with their name, their year, their place or their own history attached sits outside the market they have already swept, because it did not exist until you had it made or went looking for it.

The risk is that a miss here is permanent, since a keepsake cannot be quietly consumed the way a bottle can. Try it if you know them extremely well and you have a specific idea rather than a category. If the idea is generic, go back to the consumable, because a generic keepsake is the worst gift on this list rather than the best.

What to spend when nothing is impressive to them

Spending more does not solve this problem and it often makes it worse, because the person who has everything is precisely the person who can price what you sent. A large number reads as effort substituted for thought, and they will be polite about it in a way you will notice.

Set the budget where you would set it for anybody else you like that much, and put the difference into choosing rather than into the total. The top of our range is there for gifts that are genuinely marking something, and it is not the default answer for a difficult name on a list. Christmas hamper ideas covers the wider seasonal set.

Where to start

Pick the consumable or the shared occasion, choose one very good thing rather than a lot of things, and stop trying to out-shop somebody who shops for a living. Our luxury hampers and Christmas hampers are grouped so you can decide in a few minutes, the personalised card is free, and everything is hand-packed in Australia and sent Australia-wide. Choose it, and we will take care of the rest.

Enjoy responsibly.