Ideas for Holiday Gift Book Project

December 8, 2018 6:16 AM

I've long had the dream of creating my own "Christmas annual", a small booklet filled with wonderful little things that feel like a gift. I would love to hear what you would like in such a book, and am also seeking good public-domain sources to find content.

The notion is that this is a thing I would compile and get printed each year, and distribute to friends instead of a holiday card. Something a little more like a gift and something you'd want to keep.

It would be a mixed bag of content like the "treasury" books you find around, only more personally curated by me for my friends. It wouldn't have to be Christmas-related, but generally have a mood of year-end, reflective, and celebratory. So far I've thought about including poetry, an essay, recipes, old public domain images, news about my year, interesting trivia. Maybe a "word of the year" type feature. It wouldn't be more than 20 pages, so basically whatever size the printer I go with would offer as a basic package.

If you were to receive such a thing in the mail, what would you like to find in it? Do you have any examples or ideas for content?

posted by Miko to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (10 answers total)

What about some pages they could fill out themselves? A way to reflect on their year or their goals and hopes for the coming year, sort of like a baby book or a worksheet you might have done in elementary school?

You could do a playlist of songs of the year -- print the names and titles in the book, and possibly include a link to a Spotify/Apple Music playlist where they could easily play them. Or a QR code that let them link to the playlist.

A page of other top media could also work -- whether it was things you thought were the best book, movie, TV show, play, etc of the year, or lists from generally accessible sources like box office lists and Billboard charts.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:41 AM on December 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

I would love to receive a recipe! Maybe something new you tried this year that became a staple or an old favorite. I especially like little notes that go along with recipes like how you first found it, who you made it for, when you'd recommend trying it, etc.
posted by Mouse Army at 7:02 AM on December 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

I made a book a while back of holiday cocktails, handwritten and illustrated by me. It was a lot of fun to make. So, I'd suggest one page be a cocktail or other holiday inspired beverage illustrated recipe.
posted by belau at 7:11 AM on December 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is a lovely idea. If a friend were putting this together, I'd be interested in knowing what moved her over the last year, and, more importantly, why. A favorite book, with a passage you liked, and a paragraph about why this book appealed. A photo of a place with an impressionistic statement on the feelings raised by seeing it again. The ridiculous adventures of searching for the ingredients to a new favorite recipe. Not just lists and items, but reflections.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:51 AM on December 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

A carol or other song to sing, with words and music. It could be just the melody, or it could be piano music, or vocal parts. Maybe a round would be extra nice, like something to sing with friends.
posted by bluebird at 9:58 AM on December 8, 2018

If I were doing this I would go back into my Metafilter favorites to see what kinds of new concepts, stories, knowledge, etc. I became aware of this year that I already forgot, and if there is anything neat worth sharing there.
posted by bleep at 11:13 AM on December 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Such great ideas! Thank you everyone for these thoughts, which are expanding my ideas!
posted by Miko at 1:11 PM on December 8, 2018

I love this idea.

To your question of finding good public domain content. This is something I love to poke around in. You could make a thing that had printed ephemera loosely topically based on things you and/or your partner have enjoyed or done over the year. Like, if you went to a particular location, finding a neat little news clip about it and adding that to your recounting of the trip, like an extended xmas letter. Also, and I'm sure you've considered this but feel compelled to mention it, if you're just making something for private use, I wouldn't be too much of a sticker for public domain stuff if you find the perfect thing. It's a good idea, but the spirit of copyright is to make sure that people are fairly compensated for their work. That said, it's a lot easier to share whatever you make as widely as possible if you know you have the rights to do whatever you wish. So with that in mind, here are my favorite sources.

- Public Domain Review stays on top of "new releases" into the public domain and looking on their collections page would be my first step.
- Wikipedia has a very Wikipedia style list which is nicely international
- Flickr Commons is great for photographs from cultural heritage organizations (and I'll note the Internet Archive has a weird set of 5 million images they've extracted from scanned books which is wild and kind of random but also very easy to search) Also here's a one-word search tool for finding CC-licensed stuff free on Flickr and something I made to find only public domain stuff.
- Hathi Trust is a great way to search books in the public domain and the Library of Congress's Chronicling America can be great at zooming in on a date or a location.

Me personally, I am a softie for short evocative poetry and poems are something you can nicely reproduce in a "dressed up for the holidays" way. Have fun!
posted by jessamyn at 1:35 PM on December 8, 2018 [7 favorites]

I would be delighted to receive an easy crossword puzzle.
posted by bq at 6:06 PM on December 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

I, too, love this idea.

I used to make customized calendars for my family and friends - the upper "content" pages (where you would have a picture on a typical 12-month calendar) were all the same, but the lower month grid pages listed birthdays specific to that person - so one friend who liked opera got opera singers' birthdays listed on her month pages.

Every year I had a theme - children's book authors, movies, world peace, scientists, playwrights. So the calendar would be filled with quotes from children's book authors, or scientists.

If you think you might do this more than once, having a theme can provide a nice bit of structure to inspire you.

If it's not too hard, it could be nice to leave space on a couple of pages where you could write or paste in something specific to each recipient.
posted by kristi at 12:06 PM on December 11, 2018 [1 favorite]