My gift to you - a guide to the horrors of the festive gift guide
Spicy toothpaste, tactless beauty gadgets, girly footwear ... beware of the bear traps involved in Christmas shopping
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The one when the most self-absorbed people on the planet fail, once again, to read the room and suggest that people buy their loved ones, ie them, spectacularly ridiculous gifts.
Take Goop, Gwynneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website. It advises readers to delight their significant others - gag - with the Dandelight. That would be a real dandelion, handpicked in the Netherlands, then meticulously connected, seed by seed, to LED lights to create a whimsical sculpture.
No, I’m not huffing glue. Just cutting and pasting from the website. Although, to give Goop a very small amount of credit, they do list the Dandelight under the heading: “ridiculous but awesome”.
I can think of a few other adjectives.
Other options to give your Gwynneth-adjacent beloved? A £28k Cartier watch some educational online smut, gold loafers, and a white sofa that’s just asking to have mince pie ooze rubbed into its immaculately nubbly arm.
Welcome to gift guide land, where a stocking filler is not a Lidl chocolate Santa or a Lush bath bomb. It’s a $59 box of teabags or tube of WTF cinnamon toothpaste.
This borderline bonkers suggestion is from Sali Hughes. It’s an aberration; the rest of her beauty gift choices are pretty sensible. Hughes does service journalism well, testing hair gunk and spot-blasting acids so that we don’t have to. Her advice is generally sound - go for the small and spendy rather than the large, the cheap and the probably nasty.
No one, she says loudly for the men in the audience, wants a Bayliss & Harding gift set of anything.
Toothpaste flavours aside, everyone should listen to Sali.
What she does not do is come up with soothing words to accompany some of her harder-core suggestions. I would love one of those fancy expensive little facial massagers that looks like a sex toy but it takes a bold shopper to purchase several hundred quid’s worth of unrequested wrinkle-nuking technology for their beloved.
Men are notoriously hard to buy gifts for as they have few qualms about immediately treating themselves to whatever fanboy T-shirts, ludicrous gadgets or books about dad rock hasbeens their hearts desire.
To fill this gap there’s a whole seasonal industry dedicated to butch yet useless items. In my youth these were mainly soap on a rope in the shape of a golf ball.
Today’s blokes have evolved, sort of, and manly gift guides are heavily skewed towards what used to be known as metrosexuals. This unpleasant term for blokes who have evolved past the Lynx Africa stage is no longer in common usage but that does not mean that every bachelor pad now smells of Loewe’s delicious Tomato Leaf room fragrance, as suggested by GQ.
In fact this the only fragrant thing within the men’s glossy’s suggestions. This year’s fellas apparently want a novelty Grinch mug, highly predictable whisky and charcuterie hampers and a frankly monstrous Ralph Lauren jumper that even the model looks mortified to be wearing. And he’s getting paid.
On this evidence it’s no wonder men are suffering from a loneliness epidemic and magazines are in their death agony. All that’s missing from this lineup is a set of golf tees and the novelty beer shampoo in a dimpled mug.
I thought Men’s Health might do better but the first item on their guide is pair of Adidas trainers. Women’s Adidas trainers. Yes, I’m rolling my eyes.
Men schmen, I’m buying them all a book written by a woman, they could certainly do with reading one.
Can Vogue do better? Why yes they can. Their list for ladies is, predictably, full of brain meltingly expensive stuff, but some of it’s from Ebay (although some items are already sold). There are even sub-£50 options in among the Row handbag (£4,500, similar in shape to my granny’s shopper of beloved memory) and pyjamas that cost more than my first car.
For those who have a shit ton of money to spend on the kind of dame who will recognise the Khaite belt that the professionally skeletal dames of planet fashion wear on the front row, Vogue has done a solid job.
Does the internet do any better? Every influencer who has ever attended the launch of a micellar water has compiled a gift list. These are fascinating insights into the lives of those who live within our tiny gadgets. Kate Spiers wants to give her in-laws a clothes steamer for Christmas. Because nothing says I love you like a gadget to get stubborn wrinkles out of a winter coat.
I do quite like Alexandra Stedman who used to be called The Frugality and has a good eye for cool stuff at the less kill-me-now end of the price spectrum.
She also shares my familial love of a useful gift, although her guides have yet to embrace a couple of my late mother’s greatest hits - a garden bench (unassembled) and a sack of manure.
With two wee weans of her own Stedman is also strong on gifts kids will actually use and enjoy.
An emojicamera would increase any aunt or uncle’s street cred while a tiny sausage dog is an enchanting gift for anyone in their miniature phase.
A decorated banjo, however, is one of her few off-notes. No need for that. I am begging you on behalf of parents everywhere, do not buy children noisy toys. See also xylophones, books that play tinny Christmas carols and talking versions of Barney the deeply tiresome dinosaur. But otherwise, top work Alex.
My own days of compiling festive gift guides are, thankfully, behind me. But although I now view service journalism through the rear view mirror, I do still have Thoughts.
Booze is not a great gift for people who are already squelching with the stuff. If you must proceed in a bottle-shaped direction, be original and thoughtful. I could have a bath in this Glasgow-made super cool soft option from Rapscallion.
Candles are another single transferable present that can end up in the regifting drawer. Avoid anything that smells like a fishbowl cocktail or industrial toilet cleaner. Instead, make an old person happy with something from a young person brand such as Boy Smells. Or if that is too scary, Diptyque. This is never wrong.
Proceed with caution when gifting chocolates or other foodstuffs. Never give children vast tubs of confectionery which their poor parents will then have to confiscate. Follow Sali’s small and exquisite rule here - something like these adorable Hotel du Chocolat penguins would work. For an adult, double down. It’s hard to go wrong with the Highland Chocolatier.
Or, in fact, a Lush bath bomb (the CBD ones are tremendous) or a chocolate Santa from Lidl. And if it’s an emergency gift from the garage, get Lindor. Only stone cold weirdos don’t like these.
Love this! The name of your substack is also awesome, can’t wait to read more 😊
There’s a brand called Boy Smells?