Some of the best gifts at the holidays are the simplest ones.
Take, for example, the gift of a lovely, simple holiday tin. You can fill it with a plethora of possibilities, and it is a festive reminder of the spirit of giving during this winter holiday season, no matter which holidays you might happen to celebrate.
Do you know where some of the nicest holiday tins come from?
Some of the nicest holiday tins we have seen have come from England (United Kingdom). I can’t tell you why, it has just been my experience that some of the best quality ones with nice textural work on the tins and beautiful, richly colored, detailed dimensional images just seem to have come from there.
Sometimes you can put in an actual physical item now, or even put in an “IOU” for a future something special that you might do for the recipient, which might represent a gift of your time, your expertise, or promise of something more tangible if you choose that option.
Although the holiday gift tin shown here is of a smaller size, these tins come in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and qualities. Larger tins are actually quite nice to use with say some plastic cookie cutters added inside and then a favorite cookie recipe as well.
I have included the spices for wassail (including 3.5 inch food grade cinnamon sticks, whole allspice, whole cloves), a spice ball, and then the recipe when giving some of these smaller size holiday tins as gifts for say an office party or Secret Santa or Kris Kringle gift exchange.
You could actually use tins with a different look/theme to hold say healthier tea options and a tea ball/steeper, or small containers of herbs, perhaps a vanilla bean or two, smaller containers of spices including precious saffron, etc., and tailor these more specifically to the tastes of the recipient.
You could even put thoroughly dried applesauce ornaments or gingerbread ornaments into a tin and give that combo as a wonderfully aromatic holiday gift.
Using some sort of “liner” in the tin of perhaps plastic wrap, or other times aluminum foil, or sometimes a cellophane or mylar or plastic bag, etc., can help to protect the inside of the tin. That can be useful if whatever might be placed in the tin has a tendency to say crumble, such as some cookies can. Having a liner inside the tin means that one can protect against any tiny bits of crumb residue in the crevices of the tin, making its reuse that much more feasible .
I even line disposable decorative aluminum foil holiday food/baked goods gift containers with plastic wrap when I put bar cookies in them as that way the container truly will be reusable (note, however, that not all cookies should be stored in plastic wrap–for example, NEVER store meringue cookies in plastic wrap or they will become very soft and weep!).
You might find as I do, that bar cookies do quite well in some loaf pan disposable decorative aluminum foil holiday giving gift containers. If a recipe makes 2 pounds of product, then may I suggest that you just cut the rectangular pan of potential bars into 32 pieces (create 4 long rows x 8 short ones) and each resulting piece will weigh approximately one ounce.
Back when my own mother was in a nursing home for too many years, I would bring her little things in lovely tins as a way to try to cheer her up. You see, days spent in a nursing home can seem endless for residents and they can use all the cheering up they can get.
My mother would always perk up a little bit more when I had a new tin with me and she loved to find out what might be inside. Afterwards, she would of course have the tin there as a visual reminder of my visit and our time together. That reminder was helpful, since often nursing home residents have difficulty with their short term memory and little visual reminders can help them a lot to recognize and acknowledge the passage of more current times.
What I found was that my mother would then give these beautiful tins away to the nursing aide staff or even to other visitors who came to see her during the holiday season. Although I had not planned for her to do that, I came to realize that it made her happy to do so–it enabled her to give a gift, too, during this special time of year.
So I may not have all the holiday tins I used to own, but they have all gone to good homes as the people who visited my mother gave so much to her to help make those last years of her life in a nursing home a bit more pleasant for her.
Take the opportunity to make someone else’s life a bit more pleasant this holiday season, perhaps by giving a lovely holiday tin filled with something special from you to them.