Stumped for holiday gift ideas? Look no further. Here are ten ways into story with holiday gifts that will touch your friends’ hearts with the true meaning of story. 

Escape Rooms and Games

Escape rooms are super popular these days; tabletop versions to play in your own home are also available. An escape room is a puzzle-solving challenge for a group of friends (or strangers). Inspired by the “locked-room mystery,” the players must find the clues, solve the puzzles, and “escape” the room in a set amount of time. Generally, the room and puzzles are themed. For example, we’re trying to escape an island before the volcano erupts, or we’re trying to escape a haunted mansion before the ghosts get us. While playing with a group of friends at an escape room facility is a particular treat, a more relaxing (and less expensive) evening can be spent with an escape room in a box, which can be played at home. It, too, will be a timed challenge to find clues and solve puzzles,  also suitable for a group.

Museum Visits and Memberships

History and material objects hold stories, and a family trip to a local museum over the holiday season is a great way to connect to those tales. Museums often have docents, sometimes in character and costume, to help make the artifacts come alive. In addition, or alternatively, to organizing a museum expedition, a museum membership will provide your loved ones free or reduced-price admission and other perks throughout the year. 

Books As Gifts

Books are wonderful gifts if you feel you know the recipient’s taste well and are very familiar with the story you want the give them. For example, if you’ve read and enjoyed the book and are utterly certain your friend will love it. A gift certificate for your reader friends to your local independent bookseller can be a safer bet, but sharing a book from the heart does have its charms. I’ve been pressing Hundred Ghost Soup and Vita Nostra on folks who are on the same wavelength as me for a while now.

Games

Storytelling games make great gifts for folks who you know like to play games (and make up stories). This blog has reviewed Fall of Magic and Fiasco. Once Upon A Time and Gloom are also great for family groups. Rory Story Cubes are a set of dice with pictures rather than pips. The challenge is to tell a story utilizing the pictures as prompts for a narrative of your own devising, also most fun as a collaboration. 

DNA Kit or Genealogy Membership

How about leading your family to explore your own shared heritage story? A membership in a genealogy website or even a DNA analysis, if you want to be really fancy, can be an exciting look into the past. Be well informed about the potential uses and misuses of DNA analysis, such as privacy concerns. Exploring family heritage through DNA can be interesting, but it is a “eyes-wide-open” sort of decision. 

The Gift of Time: Art and Writing Classes

Art or writing classes can be a wonderful treat for people so inclined and can be fun to take with a friend or family member. Check out your local community college or school district continuing education programs for lots of choices at a low cost.

Movie Day Gifts

Treating a loved one to the cinema is a tried-and-true gift at my house. And, of course, with electronic media, the filmed story can be enjoyed at the recipient’s leisure, multiple times. 

Mysterious Packages

A particular favorite creative storytelling medium of mine is the mysterious package. The lucky recipient receives a series of deliveries that unfold a story through documents and artifacts. Generally a cover letter, purportedly from some caretaker of the information, seeks help to solve a mystery. Sometimes they just want to pass along a troublesome task or get a dust-collecting box off of their desk. Separate mailings follow with more documents and clues. This sort of gift touches all the bases for me: interesting mail to open, a story to read, realistic facsimiles to admire, and puzzles to solve. Sometimes there are crafts to assemble!

Interactive Mystery Mail

A cross between the tabletop escape room game and the mysterious package, your friend can examine evidence and interact with a “detective” via text message or email to gain hints, confirmations, and additional clues to solve a crime. At my house, we’ve enjoyed challenges presented by Sleuth Kings.

Journals and Pens

Sure, your friends can write stories on computers, but handwritten thoughts really get the juices flowing. Or maybe they like to journal during roleplaying games. Bookstores are replete with beautiful journals, but also consider a recycled journal, such as Ex Libris, notebooks that evoke fond memories of past stories. 

A journal full of lovely, thick, smooth paper cries out for a decent pen. I’m pretty excited about fountain pens at the moment, but a wide array of high-quality ink delivery systems are available. Goulet Pens and Jet Pens are two excellent online shops. These sites include many good tutorials and reviews to aid the selection of the perfect pen.

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