You Don’t Need Another Gift Guide.

Let’s rethink gifting—starting with everything the guides get wrong.

ON GIFTING (AND WHY THIS IS NOT A GIFT GUIDE)

There’s a strange phenomenon this season—beyond the usual cultural twin comets of performative coziness and everyone suddenly drinking pumpkin-spice beverages again. This year’s standout, its true reigning monarch, is The Gift Guide. Everyone has one. Influencers, micro-influencers, brands, big stores, tiny stores, people who have two followers and a dream. It’s like Oprah’s Favorite Things except… now everyone is Oprah. (Including, in some ways, you, and you, and you, and ME.)

And I keep wondering: are all these guides born out of generosity or because we’ve been told that being alive in 2025 requires turning ourselves into brands? When every person is a brand, everything becomes content—and the repetition multiplies like matching pajamas on Instagram every December 1st.

This, to be clear, is not another gift guide. Pinky promise, scout’s honor, hand-over-heart.

But I have been drowning in them—on IG, TikTok, Substack, in emails, in group chats… everywhere. And here’s the thing: they are fun to make. They’re basically a grown-up Santa wishlist. But as much as I enjoy peeking at people’s wildly unrealistic lists (“I’m obsessed with this $900 ladle”), they rarely feel like gifts. They feel like aspirations.

So I found myself wondering: what even is gifting, underneath all of this?
If you strip away the trendiness, the marketing, the religion, the pressure?

And maybe it’s because I live much of the year on a remote island where most of the things I see online I can’t even get, but it’s made me pause and really reflect on the whole ritual of gifting—what it is beneath the noise.

For me, gifting has always been about one thing: recognition. Seeing someone clearly, and choosing or making something that says, quietly but unmistakably, I know you. I notice what lights you up. I paid attention. The best gifts make people smile inwardly, the private kind of smile.

And honestly? Nothing communicates that more directly than something handmade. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, its imperfections are the charm—the proof of touch, of time, of care.

So, in the spirit of actually seeing the people we love—not just linking them to things on a gift guide—here are some of my favorite gifts to make. Not a guide. Just possibilities. And bonus: most are ideal to do with kids, and all are better with a cozy movie or audiobook playing in the background.