The Best Last-Minute Holiday Gifts Don’t Need Wrapping!

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Scrambling frantically to buy meaningful gifts for Christmas or Hanukah? Well, you can relax (a little). Pleasing those near and dear to you this holiday season need not involve any last-minute shopping mall runs or late-night web crawls.

All you need is a reasonable sense of what your intended gift recipients like (or might like) to do with their time. That’s because, according to a growing body of social science research, the best way to increase the enjoyment, satisfaction and general happiness of your loved ones (not to mention office mates) is to give them real-life experiences.

What does that mean, exactly? Well, depending on the gift-receiver in question, it could mean almost any kind of in-person activity, adventure, or escapade, from concert tickets to restaurant meals, from guitar or cooking lessons to museum or amusement park passes, from rafting trips to factory tours to island getaways. “The happiness we get from our experiences give us more enduring pleasure,” says Cornell psychology professor Tom Gilovich, who since 2003 has been exploring the distinction between material and experiential purchases.

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