In a season of high spirits and spirited spending, experts say focusing on sentiment over receipts is more likely to bring holiday cheer.

On Christmas Eve in 2013, Elisa Stead, an American living abroad in Iceland, was ready to celebrate the holiday with her fiancé and his family. But when she tore open the wrapping on his gift for her, she was disheartened to discover what lay inside: a car-window scraper. Sure, she lived in a frosty place, but she didn’t own a car. Receiving such a thoughtless gift made for an unhappy holiday, and the relationship ended within the year.

Two years later, Stead was living in Norway and recently engaged to a different man. She still felt detached from the magic of Christmas so her new fiancé, Tore Græsdal, made it his mission to revive it for her. But that didn’t mean spending lavishly. Instead, Græsdal recorded himself reading Norwegian folk tales, and added in a couple of sound effects, like a crackling fire, to make it feel cozy.

The recordings signified their future together in her adopted country and her embrace of a new culture and language. Stead, who traveled often for work and didn’t yet live with her fiancé, took comfort in listening to the folk tales when she and Græsdal were apart. Years later, the couple still return to the recordings, now playing them for their children. Græsdal’s gift that year was priceless in both senses: It cost him nearly nothing to create, and it was so unique no price could be placed on it.

The holiday season is a time of high spirits and spirited spending. As people deal with the pressure of finding the perfect gift for their loved ones, many gifters respond by throwing money at the challenge. One survey found that Americans plan to spend an average of $831 on gifts this year; more than half of them incurred credit card debt to cover last year’s costs, and nearly a third of those are still paying that debt off. According to experts, this approach may be misguided.

Givers “tend to overspend each time they set out to purchase a meaningful gift,” Francis J. Flynn and Gabrielle S. Adams, two professors at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, wrote in a study. They found that, while “gift givers assume that more expensive gifts convey a higher level of thoughtfulness,” recipients don’t see them that way.

Instead, it’s worth considering gifting options that, like Græsdal’s, cost little or nothing, but can be especially cherished because they demonstrate the time and effort that have gone into a token worthy of the giver’s affection for the recipient.