The Anti-Gift Guide Holiday Gift Guide
fwiw: this isn't an anti-capitalist or anti-influencer rant, I promise! Instead, it's a set of tools to help YOU give great gifts, year after year, that keeps gifting personal and connected.
I’m just going to say it — I don’t love gift guides. I admit they’re useful (to a point) and do have their place (more on that later—keep reading) but relying solely on them feels like it takes away some of the personalization and connection that makes gifting, well, gifting.
The ‘Gift Guide’ was a staple of department stores, going as far back as the 1920s when Neiman Marcus first published their 16-page Christmas Book1. Since then, retailers have sent out catalogues and pamphlets helping customers shop for the holidays.
In more modern times, we’ve seen online publications (notably, Goop) create curated lists of favorite gifts for “everyone” (or in the case of Goop, for…no one?) Bloggers followed suit, and now it seems influencers and creators of all levels are cranking them out.
Identified by collages made in Canva and littered with affiliate links, I believe the gift guide truly does have good intentions. Gifting is hard. It’s emotional, involves our loved ones and our finances, and ultimately is something most of us want to get right.
I have really grown to love gifting, which took some time. Gifting is my dead-last love language and it’s one of my husband’s top. He’s taught me the joy of gifting — how receiving a gift can be a wonderful way to feel cared for by someone, and that giving can be a way to share our love for the ones in our lives. To some extent, the old adage ‘it’s the thought that counts!’ is absolutely true and is enough. Just the act of gifting is enough to show you care. Getting a gift from someone should help you feel that connection.
But I know that’s easier said than done. I’m sure we’ve all been in situations where we’ve stressed over the right gift for someone2. We want to give gifts that make people feel appreciated and cared for, and that feeling is super valid. I’d also reckon most of us have been in situations where we’ve received gifts and thought “hmm, interesting choice…” and then smiled and said we loved it anyway (because we loved that we were thought of, even if we didn’t have a want or need for the physical item that was given).
There is an inherent pressure to gifting, and gift guides help take the guesswork away. Get your Sister-in-Law a candle, they’ll tell you. A bath bomb for that co-worker you got for Secret Santa, even if you’re not even sure that they have a bathtub, you’ll read. Another couch blanket for your mom, they’ll assure you, this one is different because it’s a chunky knit! You keep reading. That man in your life NEEDS another leather good or tech-forward tchotchke!
Before I go any further, let me be crystal clear on a few things:
I think gifting is, honestly, a wonderful way to show we care about someone.
I’ve used gift guides before, and found them helpful to spark inspiration or to find something specific or niche for a particular person
I’ve also made my own gift guides before, back in my Wordpress blogging days (and yes — they were littered with canva graphics and affiliate links).
I understand the creator economy is complicated, and gift guides offer a really straightforward way for creators to put out content and get paid. I’m not against this. Get that bag!
I also think gift guides have really great ideas, and it is always fun to see what other people are including in them.
Sometimes, we want things to be easy. And that’s totally okay. Sometimes someone on your holiday list is the perfect fit for a gift guide. And it’s awesome when that happens.
Gift guides attempt to help us find the ‘new’ ‘hot’ thing for people in our lives, but I’d argue that gifting is far too personal for that to be the beginning and end. And I would also argue it makes gifting harder in the long run (that is, if we think of gifting as a skill).
Year after year, unsure of what to get for our sister-in-laws or Secret Santa co-workers, we turn to some gift guide on the internet, hoping it’ll be the answer to all of our gifting woes. They also help us feel ‘cool’ and relevant’, as most gift guides try to curate things that are cool-in-the-moment and almost become a way to flex our interestingness.
So instead of another gift guide filled with canva graphics, affiliate links, and items I think are cool, I’m going to share my gifting process that helps keeps things personal and intentional. I in no way think I’m a phenomenal gifter—it doesn’t come easily or naturally to me. But like anything—writing, learning an instrument, running, cooking, [insert other skill-based action here], gifting gets easier with practice. Nothing I’m going to share is revolutionary in my opinion, but maybe it’ll be helpful to one other person. Maybe not, maybe this only works for me.
Step One: think about gifting all year round
I have a note in my phone with the people in my life I may find myself buying gifts for most often. I am pretty terrible at keeping it updated, but maybe some of you are better at this type of thing than I am. Whenever I see something that makes me think about that person, or if they allude to wanting something or liking something, I’ll throw it in my notes. The hope is that come the holidays (or birthdays, graduation, other important event) you’ll have at least one thing per person on your wish list.
A friend of mine—and I mean this as respectfully as possible—used to have this god-awful wallet3. It was this black synthetic wallet that closed with velcro. It didn’t fit her at all, and was the type of wallet I’d expect from a Dad traveling abroad. Whenever she whipped that bad boy out, we’d exclaim “how do you still have that god-awful wallet! You need a new one!”. She’d laugh and say “Oh, I know. It’s bad, but I don’t mind it”. After the tenth time this happened, I opened my notes app. Under her name, I scribbled: wallet. any other wallet. I promptly forgot about that note, remembering it after I’d already get whatever gift for whatever season was coming up.
Fast forward a few years later, she actually replaced the wallet with something better! Leather, functional, cute. But it was huge. It was like the size of a clutch. Cute, functional, 1000x better, but too big!
My other friend and I were trying to figure out what to buy her for her birthday one year, and I opened my note. Forgetting all about the old wallet, I saw my words staring back at me. “I’ve got it”, I said. “We’re getting her a normal-sized leather wallet”. And buy a normal-sized leather wallet we did. A gift years in the making, it was a perfect fit at that moment.
A TikTok4 I saw a few years ago takes this idea a step further. This woman kept a few bins in her garage, and every time she had a thought she’d actually go ahead and just buy the gift, tagging it with the person’s name, so she always had a stockpile to give. I live in New York City, and don’t have the space for that. I also hate accumulating too many items (which you wouldn’t know by the state of my apartment), but that level of unused goods sitting there would make me a little stressed. BUT if you have a garage or big space and the desire to have unused items sit there, this could be another way to do it. I do like that this stretches buying throughout the year, though
Step Two: Do some good ol’ fashioned brainstorming.
I don’t live in a perfect world, and so I often don’t have the perfect gift for someone waiting on my little list when the holiday season comes. Maybe this works for me because I like to write and journal, and I’ll essentially do just that. Start free-writing about the person I’m looking to buy a gift for, guided by a few questions:
What activities or hobbies bring this person joy?
What have I seen them really enjoying? (Books, shows, new things, apps, topics of conversation — this can be concrete or more abstract)
Are there any obvious gaps in things they need?
What are some things they’d never buy themselves in a million years?
What types of things they comment or compliment on?
Are there opportunities for experiences or services that I could gift this person?
What are things this person dislikes?
What are some of my favorite moments with this person?
What are my favorite things about them?
What’s the most important thing to know about this person?
This list isn’t exhaustive nor is it all essential. I pick and chose, but find that brainstorming in this way helps me get to the core of who people are, at least from my perspective. Once I have all those questions answered, then I start thinking of what gifts (physical items, consumable goods, or even experiences) would fit in nicely with what I’ve written and brainstormed.
A friend who loves outdoor games and nice design got a really pretty bocce set. My husband who loves Taschen coffee table books and jazz got a copy of “Jazz Covers” and Herbie Hancock tickets. I got another friend who loves baking but didn’t have a zester a microplane. My parents, who’d had the same toaster for 20 years that by the end of its life wouldn’t even toast a full piece of bread, got a Smeg when they moved into their new house a few years ago. Just some examples — I’m not trying to get too prescriptive here. That’s not the point.
Step Three: Look for inspiration
Armed with your lists and brainstorming, if you’re still unsure what you’re doing and at a loss, it’s time to hit the pavement—either physically or virtually. I like to browse for inspiration. A lot of the people on my to-give lists are into nice looking things, so MoMA Design Store tends to be where I start to look. I love heading to Holiday Markets to see what small business owners and local creators have been working on, and there are a few shops in Brooklyn I’ve successfully found nice things for people in the past. And yeah, this might be where I look at a holiday gift guide or two (Look, I’ve said it throughout this post — they have their place. In my opinion, this is that place).
Equipped with loose ideas and an open mind, browsing for inspiration can be an impactful way to find the stuff that’s out there that you didn’t know about, or find a gift for someone you didn’t even think of before!
Step Four: Take a step back and focus on feeling
If at this point you’re still feeling lost and stressy, take a step back. Put away the lists, the design-forward websites, the markets, and yes — even the gift guides. Think about who this person is to you. How do you want them to feel when they open their gift? And also importantly, how do you want to feel once you’ve given them a gift? I think that’s often lost. Gifting is of course about the other person, but tuning into the feelings we want to elicit on both ends can be a powerful tool to get back to basics and recenter on what really matters. Knowing gifting is a top love language for my husband, I want him to feel loved when he opens something. I want him to know I thought about him and picked something out for him specifically.
At the end of the day, gifting is about connection—it’s not about perfection, spending a ton of money, or finding the trendiest thing on a list of an influencer you don’t even like. If a gift can make someone feel seen, appreciated, or bring them a little joy, then I’d say you’ve done the job. And at the end of the day, it really is the thought that truly does count.
Cue me, every fall/winter, specifically with my husband. His birthday is in December, and I am very careful to treat that and Christmas as two distinct holidays. Now, we also have our wedding anniversary in November. So the end of the year gets expensive!
Let’s be real — it was probably a Reel I watched in January. I’m in my 30s afterall.
I also keep gift idea lists running all year. Total lifesaver!