keep the pair, skip the thousand verses

“but, katharine, what was sent to you from fair dumain?” asks the princess in the last act of love’s labour’s lost. “madam, this glove,” katharine replies. “did he not send you twain?” the princess teases, and katharine admits that he did, “and moreover / some thousand verses of a faithful lover” (love’s labour’s lost, act 5, scene 2¹).

dumain got half of it right. the gloves were perfect. the thousand verses were too much. four centuries later, that is still the whole difficulty of a first christmas together gift for her: how to say “i have been paying attention” without saying everything at once. the answer is a beautiful, useful object chosen specifically for her, such as a pair of fine leather gloves, given with a single line rather than a thousand.

a courtship gift with long roots

dumain was following convention. in shakespeare’s england, gloves “were the traditional gift of suitors to their betrothed”, as an annotator on the pepys diary encyclopedia² puts it, and the scene above is cited there as evidence: the suitor has sent gloves, and katharine has accepted them. the gift worked because a glove is shaped by a single hand and worn against the skin. it was intimate by nature, but it was not a vow.

that remains its great advantage. a first christmas has an unspoken calibration to it. some gifts carry meaning before you add any: a ring or pendant suggests permanence, a holiday booked for next august assumes a future, lingerie can feel like a gift for the giver. at the other extreme, anything purely practical looks rushed. gloves sit in the narrow, warm space between, personal and tactile, with nothing to prove.

what the right pair says

to choose gloves well you need to know three things: the coat she wears most, the colours she reaches for, and roughly the size of her hands. a few months into a relationship, you probably know all three without realising it. that knowledge is the gift. when she opens the box and finds a pair that matches her camel coat, or her all-black winter uniform, she will understand that you have been looking.

and they keep saying it, quietly. she will wear them on the bus, at the market, on the walk home in the dark at half past four. each time, the gift is in use. a first christmas present that is worn every day through january and february carries the relationship into the new year with it, which is exactly the right amount of significance.

a first christmas together gift for her, by stage

the register should rise gently with time. a rough guide, which assumes you have not already agreed a budget:

if you have not talked about presents, do. a light “are we doing gifts?” in early december removes the risk of a lopsided exchange, which is the one thing that can sour an otherwise lovely morning.

colour, cut and the single detail

choose the colour for her, not for you. if her coat is camel or oatmeal, chocolate or oxblood leather looks rich against it. if she dresses in black head to toe, black is right, but a black glove with movement in it, such as a fringe that falls from the wrist and swings when she reaches for something, tells her at once that someone chose it. wutong’s black fringed leather gloves are exactly that. if she already wears colour, a saturated glove extends something she does instinctively.

then look at her sleeves. a neat wrist-length glove sits beneath a ribbed or narrow cuff; a slightly longer one tucks into a tailored coat and closes the gap against the wind. choose one decorative idea and no more. fringe, a braid or an unusual cuff can each make a pair special; together, they make it loud.

the card, kept short

this is where dumain went wrong, and where most first-christmas gifts are won or lost. one line is enough, as long as only you could have written it. “for our walk on boxing day.” “so you stop borrowing my pockets.” “for the hands that were so cold on that bridge in october.” specific beats eloquent, every time, and a first christmas card is very often kept.

think about timing too. if you are spending the day with separate families, exchange gifts before you leave, so she can wear them over the holidays and think of you on the cold walk after lunch.

if your first christmas is also an anniversary

couples who met in winter often find the two dates almost on top of each other. resist merging them into a single large gift. make the anniversary about an experience, such as dinner where you first met, and make christmas about an object she can keep. gloves suit this well, because they belong so clearly to the season in which you met.

wutong makes high-end leather gloves, in colour and in black, designed to be given from one person to another. if this is your first christmas together, you will find them in our gift guide.