I had great fun with this concept last year. So I thought it would be fun to revisit the seasonally appropriate idea of gifts, awards, and recompenses for the heroes as potential story and adventure hooks. Any GM can leave a vorpal sword or a headband of intellect wrapped up under the tree for the characters this year. But a thoughtful GM can create the personalized gift of unusual offerings and honors that grateful benefactors, patrons, or persons saved from peril might bestow upon the characters, rewarding them for an adventure well done.
A grateful long-retired knight bequeaths the characters with a magical token given to them by the late king they once served. Though the knight never had cause to use the token, it is said that breaking it performs a one-time summoning of a powerful celestial who will defend the wielder and follow their orders. However, what the knight doesn’t know is that the celestial bound to the token was ordered to serve them and only them, and won’t react kindly to being summoned by others. When called upon, the celestial might grudgingly defend and assist the characters, then demand a favor or quest in return — or else. They might agree to aid the party in exchange for first taking over its leadership, then leading the characters into peril far outside their pay grade. Or the celestial might assume that the characters are ignoble sorts who’ve robbed and murdered their dear knight, and set about seeking retribution.
Borrowed Power
A powerful priest or the magic of a mysterious shrine might grant the characters a permanent magical boon in lieu of magic item rewards — a once-per-day combat assist, the ability to cast a cantrip or spell, a boost to AC or a saving throw, or some other benefit appropriate for the characters’ level. But what the characters don’t realize at first is that those benefits are fueled by life force stolen from villains cursed by the priest or shrine, who take an equivalent penalty or lose access to magic bestowed upon the heroes. Now those cursed villains are looking for a way to get back what’s been taken from them — and the characters are in their sights.
Noblesse Oblige
To show their gratitude at the party’s heroics, the monarch of a small, not-particularly-wealthy realm bestows upon each of the characters a noble title vacated because its previous holder and their heirs were slain in whatever war/disaster/monster incursion the heroes were instrumental in overcoming. However, what the monarch didn’t mention is that each of those titles comes with extensive debts and obligations — perhaps including obligatory and potentially deadly quests — that the characters are now on the hook for.
Shared Accommodation
The characters are gifted with a talisman that allows them to access a wondrous extradimensional space — a magnificent mansion, demiplane, or similar sanctum. But what they learn only after using the sanctum for a time is that the space appears to also be used by other heroes, with evidence of their presence appearing each time the characters enter the space. The characters might end up taking the other group’s treasures stored in the sanctum, assuming them to be some sort of magically appearing gift — or have their own stored treasures disappear for the same reason. They might find lore or notes left by the other group, which point to mysterious adventure narratives the characters can get caught up in while they try to track that group down. They might discover that the other adventurers using the sanctum are actually a group of villains related to their own quests, allowing them to use the space to seek those villains out — or to turn the sanctum into a deadly ambush site.
Giving What We Can
Rescuing or saving an impoverished community sees the grateful members of that community gift the characters things their meager incomes allow them — homespun goods, folk art, trinkets, and so forth. But over time, increasingly powerful monsters and villains start to be drawn to the party, and to one of those gifts in particular. Eventually, the characters realize that the innocuous gift is an artifact that was hidden away in that form by a deity or powerful spellcaster. Now the artifact is pushing them toward an adventure in which the characters are meant to restore the powerful relic to its true form — or die trying.
The Gift of Friendship
As a reward from a powerful high priest or deific agent, the characters receive a soul boon — a powerful magical ward that protects them against death in some way (advantage on death saving throws, boosts to healing, automatic temporary hit points, or whatever). But what they don’t realize is that the cosmic power who grants the boon does so by lumping all the characters’ souls together — along with the souls of other heroes the boon has been granted to. This soul mixing might manifest first as the characters learning each other’s secrets or having strange dreams of being other people. It might escalate to compulsions to engage in quests that other soulbound heroes failed at. And it might culminate in the characters seeking out the deity who granted the boon in the hope of figuring out a way to see its power reworked or undone before they lose all sense of their own identities.