The best gift I ever gave was a second-hand gift. I'd traded a pack of 9-volt batteries for a used cookbook at a white elephant gift exchange at church. The Art of Chinese Cooking by the Benedictine Sisters of Peking. It had been my mother's text book when we moved to Japan, where my dad was stationed in 1957. We fell in love with the recipes, and mom literally wore the book to tatters over the next 20+ years. She kept the pages in a ziplock bag to preserve them as best she could. Now I held a pristine, 1st edition in my hands. I was able to make six copies for personal use, and gifted the book to my mom that Christmas. She was overwhelmed and estatic to have it back in her hands. My five sibs were also delighted to have copies of the recipes we'd grown up with. Years later, I found it again on ebay, and purchased it for my own cookbook shelf.