I think that often, we give gifts out of obligation or expectation. For a birthday, for Christmas, a housewarming, a wedding. So often, it seems that these are token gifts. The things that you give because you’re expected to give something.

I want to give more heart gifts. Gifts that really mean something. More than tokens. More than obligations. Gifts that express my appreciation, my love, my compassion, my warmth. I think that often heart gifts are gifts of ourselves. Our time, our energy, our attention, our talent. Things we have created with our hands, with our thoughts.

Or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson so eloquently put it in his essay, “Gifts”:

Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.

At bartleby.com you can read the entire essay.