Christmas can be a stressful and expensive time of year, and rifts can all too easily occur when relatives are battling over the priciest game consoles, the most flamboyant jewellery or the biggest roasted bird.
If you're feeling the stress this Christmas time one way of dealing with the family battles is to seek family support from charities such as OnePlusOne, who'll council you on how to avoid disagreements over the holiday period.
Another way to avoid getting buried under the madness and the expense is to instil Christmas cheer in your family with free Christmas presents!
Here are a few for the people who matter in your family, and not a sock puppet in sight!
For the man in your life
- 'I Owe You' a meal of home-cooked steak and chips
- Create a photo book of memories using your favourite snaps
- Cut out a section of a map (a location which means something to the both of you) and frame it on a plain white background.
- Make them an 'I owe you' booklet of all their favourite things
For the woman in your life
- Pick a bunch of wild flowers with holly and berries and present her with a Christmas morning bouquet
- Cook a lavish Christmas breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs
- Make her a Christmas card this year
- Frame a collection of photographs of the two of you
- Paint a heart on a stone for her to display
For your father
- Some vineyards offer free tours and tastings sessions, enquire about booking for him
- Wrap his favourite whisky in a festive tartan ribbon
- Cook a slap-up meal for him
- Take him to a free museum
- Frame a picture of the two of you
For your mother
- Get your nearest and dearest to write down their favourite recipes and put them in a scrap book to make a personalised recipe book
- Take your mother to a free art gallery
- Give her seeds to plant - you can often get freebies in gardening magazines
- Sing her a song
- Make her a friendship bracelet using left over bits of thread and string
For your teenager
- Put together a personalised University recipe collection for the teenager in your life before they fly the nest
- Put on a movie night for them at home, complete with popcorn, dimmed lights and the latest box office hit
- Re-gift them the books from their childhood
- Promise to cook their favourite meal
- Make them a playlist of your favourite songs from when you were their age, they'll love hearing your 'wacky' music taste
For your children
- Create a treasure trail adventure day for your little ones complete with hand-drawn maps
- Make a patchwork quilt using scraps of old material
- Make a personalised storybook
- Sew their own personalised stockings
- Draw them a picture
For your sibling
- Make a scrapbook of images from your childhood ending with the most recent picture of the two of you
- Make your sister a shell necklace using collected shell shards from the beach
- Do a volunteering outreach activity with them
- If you don't live close to your sibling record a video telling them how much you love and miss them
- Using an old jam jar fill it with 'memories' written out on coloured paper
For your grandparents
- Write them a poem
- Make them a calendar on the computer using pictures of you and them together
- Write them a letter telling them how much you love them
- Boil their favourite fruits with sugar to make jam
- Take them on a day trip to a location of their choice
For your in-laws
- Plant some spice seeds in a washed-up jam jar with a little soil and label it
- Use your spices to make up a spice blend for them like a Moroccan rub
- Apply for free audience tickets to their favourite chat show
- Melt down old candles and fill tea cups with the wax for a unique candle gift
- Promise them a day's gardening service from yourself
For your estranged partner
- Bake them cookies or shortbread
- Make them a dried flower bouquet from wild flowers
- Make their Christmas card yourself
- Create a joke box by typing out jokes onto coloured paper
- Offer to help them out in some way, maybe babysitting the kids while they go out or doing their shopping for them
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