I bought gift boxes of gourmet almonds (4 bags of different types of almonds packed in an attractive gift box with excelsior) and drove around town dropping them off at the homes of clients. It was an absolute blast!

About half the folks weren’t home so I left the gifts on their doorsteps and called and left a heads-up message.

With the half who were home, I had a delightful time whether it was a couple of minutes chatting in the doorway or a half hour tour of the home and catching up on everything.

Thanksgiving gifts!

I used to have a gift fruit business, sort of a mini Harry and David. My signature product was a very rare variety of fresh dates, melt in your mouth dates, only grown in Arizona. That business, shall we say… didn’t succeed. Nevertheless, I became a minor expert on gift giving.

WHY THANKSGIVING GIFTS?

NO TENSION. Everyone knows “holiday” gifts are really Christmas gifts in disguise. And even if you are super careful with how you word that “holiday” gift card, you’ll probably offend someone. With Thanksgiving gifts, you don’t have any religious complications, no worries about accidently offending a client, no walking on eggshells.

FIRST GIFT OF THE SEASON. You could eliminate the religious holiday issue with a New Years gift but by then people are burnt out on gifts and, really, most people will assume you just forgot about them until it was too late to send a Christmas holiday gift.

THANKSGIVING IS FOR GIVING THANKS. “Thanksgiving is coming up and I just wanted to say thank you,” as you hand your gift to your client. No gift card machinations with “holiday” and “season,” just a simple Thanksgiving card with a handwritten “Thank you.” It’s immediately understood and appreciated.

THE BIG DISADVANTAGE of Thankgiving gifts is that very, very few gifts are appropriate for Thankgiving.

Of course, only food is appropriate.

Most food gifts, however, have problems with perishability or lack of broad acceptability, for example, many people hate dates and fruitcake.

To me the ideal Thanksgiving gifts are nuts. Nuts are a traditional Thankgiving food – turkey, stuffing, pies and nuts. Nuts aren’t perishable and they have good broad acceptability.

Last year I had the gifts sent to my clients but this year I decided to hand deliver them and I’m sure glad I did.

What a great day! And I have some more to deliver tomorrow. I love Thanksgiving!