The Best Christmas Gift Ideas For Mum, When She Is Cooking For Nine

There is a version of Christmas, still extremely common, in which one woman does the food shopping, the cooking, the present buying for both sides of the family, the card writing and most of the diplomacy — and then opens a scented candle.

That is the brief this list is written for. It changes the ranking in one important way: at Christmas, more than at any other occasion, the most valuable thing you can give a mother is not an object at all. It is a job she no longer has to do. The objects come after that, and they are ranked on whether they will still be in the house in February.

What is the best Christmas gift for a mum?

Take something off her, in writing, and then give her something that will still exist in February. Those are two different gifts and the best Christmases involve both — one that reduces the work of the day, one that survives it.

The reason the ranking below opens with something that is not a product is that Christmas is the occasion where the gap between what a mother is given and what she actually needs is at its widest.

How to read this shortlist: every price and specification below comes from the maker's own product page or retail listing at the time of writing, and this category re-prices constantly. We have not run these against each other in a blind test — this is a comparison of terms, formats and what each one leaves behind, which is a different and more honest thing than implying a testing programme we do not have.

1. Take a job off her — and put it in writing

Not a product, and it beats everything below it. The washing up, permanently, for the whole day. The sprouts and the potatoes, done at yours and brought over. Collecting your grandmother. Doing both sides of the family's cards.

Two conditions make this a gift rather than a promise. It has to be written down and specific — a card that says “I am doing all the vegetables and the washing up on the 25th” is a gift; “let me know what I can do” is a request for her to manage you. And it has to be non-negotiable, so she cannot politely decline it at eleven o'clock when she is behind.

Cost: nothing. It is, reliably, the thing mothers in this position say they wanted.

“Ask what she will be doing at two o'clock on Christmas Day. Then give her that hour back.”Delphine Roy, Life & Money Editor

2. LifePages — best object, and it can be bought late

LifePages sends fifty guided questions over three, six or twelve months, answered by typing or speaking, printed as a hardback with up to a hundred photographs.

At Christmas it has a specific advantage. The house is at its fullest — decorations up, presents everywhere, four new things in every room — and a membership adds nothing to it. What it adds is something in twelve months' time, when the tree is long gone and there is a printed book on the shelf instead. Of everything on this page it is the item most likely to still matter in February.

The twelve-month plan at £69 is the right choice here: one question a week starting in January is a pleasant thing to have in an otherwise bleak month, and it finishes in time for next Christmas.

Disclosed plainly: LifePages is operated by the same team that publishes this site — see the box above. It renews at £68, £94 or £192 if the book has not gone to print by the end of the term. Diarise it, and note there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Because nothing ships, this is also the answer on the 23rd. Print the confirmation, write the first question in the card, and it looks exactly like a gift bought in October.

3. A hardcover photo book — the year in thirty photographs

The best gift on this list to receive and the one with the tightest deadline. Thirty photographs from the year, a line under each, bound.

Artifact Uprising sits at the quality end, with softcovers from about $19 and hardcovers to around $165. It is also, quietly, the gift that solves a problem specific to large families: everybody has photographs of the year on their phones and nobody has ever put them anywhere.

Order by the first week of December. The fortnight before Christmas is when photo printers miss dates, and a book that arrives on the 27th is not the same gift.

4. Aura Carver — best object that works on the day

The one thing here that can be unwrapped, plugged in and used before lunch, which at Christmas is worth more than it sounds. Load it with photographs before you wrap it and there is nothing for her to set up.

Around $179, about £140. No annual fee and unlimited photo and video storage for the life of the frame, where Skylight charges about $39 a year for much of its functionality and Nixplay starts near $19.99 — and a recurring charge is a poor thing to give somebody at Christmas.

It keeps working all year, too. Everyone who was there on the day can send pictures to it in January, which is the part that makes it more than a frame.

5. Storyworth — the dollar-billed version

Delivered by email, so it clears the delivery deadline the same way the second pick does. A weekly question for a year, then a hardcover, on tiers from $59 to $199.

The most recognisable name in the category, which at a family Christmas means less explaining across a table. Voice recording and guided phone calls are on all tiers. The $59 tier prints black and white only, and page overages beyond the tier limit are the standard complaint.

Choose between this and the second pick on currency and price rather than on features; they are closer than the marketing on either side suggests.

What not to give her at Christmas

Anything that creates a task on the day. A device needing an account, a subscription needing a decision, a gadget needing assembly — on the 25th, in that house, you have not given her a present, you have given her an item on a list.

Anything for the kitchen, unless she has asked by name. A new roasting tin given to the woman cooking the roast is a sentence with a subtext, whether or not you meant one.

And bath sets, slippers and candles — the three items that make up most of what gets quietly passed on in January. If you are buying one of them, buy it as the small thing alongside something on this list, not as the gift.