Galaxy OriginsA gift for the whole family has a harder job than a gift for one person. It has to suit a parent and a teenager, the person who reads the instructions and the one who never will, and it has to still mean something after the wrapping paper is gone. The ideas that manage it share one thing: everybody is in them.
What makes a good whole-family gift
- Everyone has a part in it. If one person is the real recipient and the rest are watching, it is not a family gift.
- It is used or seen together. A game played at the table, a trip taken together, a picture hung where everyone passes.
- It outlasts the season. Most of what is unwrapped on December 25 is forgotten by February. Aim for something still there next Christmas.
Ideas that do all three
- A trip planned together. Give the destination and let each person choose one thing to do there.
- A family recipe book. Collect the dishes from both sides of the family, with the names of who cooked them first.
- A board game night box. Two or three games that work for every age, and a standing date to play them.
- A recorded family history. Interview the grandparents on video while the stories can still be asked about.
- Family wall art with a print for every person. Our Family Collection is four framed prints, one for each of you. Each shows the real galaxy that was directly overhead at the minute and place that person was born, from a telescope photograph, with their name beneath it. The four hang side by side in matching black frames: $1,666 at 16 × 20 inches, which is $294 less than four separate prints.
From the children to their parents
Grown children buying for their parents face the hardest version of this: parents who say they want nothing. What they rarely refuse is something about the family itself. A print for each child, and one for each parent, says what a single present cannot: that the family is the gift.
Star maps, photo prints or galaxy prints?
A custom star map draws the stars above a place on a date: a diagram, the same style for every customer. A photo print shows the family as it looks today. A galaxy print shows a real object in the sky, photographed by a telescope and matched to one person's moment, so no two in the family are alike. For the difference in detail, see star map vs. real galaxy photograph.
When to order for Christmas
Anything made to order needs time. Framed prints are made after you order and then shipped; the checkout shows the delivery window for your address before you pay. Ordering in November or the first days of December leaves comfortable time.