It's not too late to put a mileage spin on holiday giving and getting. The period between Thanksgiving and New Year's offers great opportunities to earn frequent-flier miles, and to use them.

More miles at the mall: The halls may be decked with holly, but the malls are decked with miles.

These malls aren't the brick-and-mortar variety, with their choked parking lots and seething crowds. More of interest to frequent-flier program members are the mileage malls — those networks of online retailers that award frequent-flier miles for purchases.

Delta's SkyMiles mileage mall, for example, boasts more than 500 participating merchants, ranging from Fortune 500 retailers to smaller specialty stores. You'd be hard pressed to think of a gift that couldn't be purchased from one of them. And through Jan. 15, a host of retailers are offering a 50 percent bonus on miles earned for purchases at the SkyMiles mall.

This season, the most compelling shopping bonus is from US Airways. Through Dec. 30, Dividend Miles members can earn up to 250 percent more miles for purchases made at more than 20 participating program partners, including FTD.com, Barnes & Noble, ShareBuilder, 21st Century Auto Insurance, Netflix, Bose, SkyMall, and the Dividend Miles Shopping Mall.

Although not as lucrative as the US Airways promotion, most of the major airlines have shopping bonuses on offer through December.

Plastic most fantastic: Shopping online requires a credit card. And while many credit cards award miles for charges, some are particularly generous.

• Virgin Atlantic is offering 45,000 bonus miles to new cardholders after using their frequent-flier credit card for the first time; up to 20,000 more bonus miles for charging $25,000 and adding additional cardholders to the account; and 1.5 miles per dollar spent for most purchases. (Virgin's offer is a response to a particularly generous credit card promotion from arch rival British Airways, which ended on Dec. 11. So it remains to be seen how long this bonus will remain in place.)

• At the other end of the spectrum, domestic discount carrier Spirit has rolled out a MasterCard that rewards users with enough Free Spirit miles for three free roundtrip award tickets after the first purchase.

The gift of miles: When the giving impulse extends beyond Christmas gifts, there are options for donating miles to charities, or earning miles (or teddy bears) for making cash donations. Members of United's Mileage Plus program who donate $50 or 7,500 Mileage Plus miles to the American Cancer Society by Dec. 31 enable a limited-edition 14-inch Gund teddy bear to be given to a hospitalized child with cancer. Anyone contributing $250 or more will receive his own teddy bear as well.

American AAdvantage members can earn one mile for every dollar donated to UNICEF, through Jan. 15.

The gift of travel: Finally, remember that frequent-flier miles can be cashed in for award tickets issued in anyone's name. So, if you have miles but neither the time nor inclination to use them yourself, giving the gift of travel is a sure way to induce Christmas smiles. The accompanying card might read: "Happy holidays. Enjoy the trip."