When I married, I promised myself to always stay one act of love ahead of my spouse. You may consider this a childishly competitive act, but don't knock it until you've tried it! My commitment to competitively love my wife is part of our 18 years of amazing marriage.

One of the ways I express my love to my wife is through what we call her "special gift" at Christmas. Gentlemen, follow my lead. Every year since our engagement, I have designed a gift that requires me to put weeks of investment into its thought and execution. I typically tell her in September that I'm thinking about it. In October, I share a little of my progress. In November I begin enacting it, and by December 24th, it's done. All that time and energy equates to my wife seeing how much I love her, and to her enjoying the anticipation along the way. Let me give you a few years’ examples.

The year of our engagement, I decided to do a parody on The Twelve Days of Christmas: each day was a verbal twist on the item mentioned for the day of the song. So, for “a partridge in a pear tree” I produced a “cartridge in a pair of trees.” It was an ink cartridge hot-glued between two little Christmas trees I picked up at the craft store. Lest you think this too stupid, just keep reading. Day two, “two Turtle Doves” was translated into two boxes of turtle chocolates, wrapped on top of two boxes of Dove bars. Day three saw just as many frozen French hens delivered to her office with an “I love you” balloon attached. By the time I got to day six, she was begging me to stop, because everyone in her office was coming by her desk to see what I would do next! It thrilled me to no end that I had created such interest in my wife—I love when she gets positive attention. I had already figured out the eleven lords a leaping and excitedly waited to execute that one, but at her request, I stopped.

On a different year, I designed and built a cedar chest so she could keep everything safe she wanted to pass on to our daughter. Another year, I took her on a trip to meet a Capuchin monkey—she wanted to hold one of those little varmints since she was a child; giving her a childhood dream was a treat for her and for me. One final example was a music box I modified. I wrote a song for our wedding and this little music box played Christmas carols on paper tape—it was like a player piano. As I stood there looking at that music box, I was convinced if I could just figure out the paper tape, I could make it play my wedding song. So I bought it! For a month, I played with that thing, figuring out what tong in the spindle played what note. When I was done, I had created a 20’ long paper tape with 3,000 individual holes punched out of it that played the melody and one harmony line of our wedding song. I have to admit, she liked that one quite a bit.

Whatever your “special” gift might be, just make certain to put the two most important parts into its creation—time and effort. If you invest those two items, the cost and its final appearance won’t matter at all, and you’ll give your spouse a treasured memory for a lifetime!

Merry Christmas and happy loving!