Gift ideas to help you embrace winter

It's not a gift guide, it's kind of a gift guide, it's cozy

Hello Wintry Mixers!

The holiday season is fully upon us, with its accompanying vibes (so many twinkly lights!), cozy rituals (watching Home Alone!), seasonal activities (baking cookies! frying latkes!), and stress (travel logistics! spending money!). If you’re reveling in this time of year - the lighting, the coziness, the rituals, here’s a reminder that you have all the ingredients you need to make winter wonderful even after the holidays are over (for more help, previous posts about getting into the holiday spirit and mining for gems come January).

Another thing that arrives at this time of year are the holiday Gift Guides. So many gift guides! I am addicted to reading them, despite the fact that I have no plans to buy anything from them. Living in Amsterdam - where many of these products are unavailable - has made this into a purely voyeuristic pastime for me. Somehow reading endless lists about the stuff that other people like is scratching my own itch to buy stuff.

From where I’m sitting, at least, and from the other newsletters I subscribe to, it seems like there are more gift guides than ever: so many that one of my favorite substack newsletters, Culture Study, released a whole analysis on the gift guide. (Other ones I’ve enjoyed include the Shangrilogs gift guide from last year and these posts on the benefits of White Elephant gift exchanges and why the writer Lisa Sibbett doesn’t give gifts to kids, both from her substack The Auntie Bulletin).

The proliferation of these gift guides could lead you to two opposing logical conclusions:

1. We don’t need any more gift guides.

2. We definitely need a Wintry Mix gift guide.

Guess which conclusion I came to?

All of the ideas on this list follow my principles for the kinds of gifts I most like to give and receive - gifts that are some combination of:

1. Useful

2. Special

3. Sustainable

I’ve also put together this list with an eye towards gifts that can help you, the gift-giver, enjoy winter (gifts that are fun to find or make) or that can help the gift-receiver enjoy winter (gifts that are cozy and seasonal).

Experiential gifts

Psychology research finds that money spent on experiences - rather than things - tends to provide more happiness and satisfaction. Gifting experiences not only reduces the amount of stuff people buy and receive for the holidays, you can use gifted experiences to give yourself and/or the recipient something to look forward to in January or February, after the holidays are over when many of us are in need of a winter boost. Theater tickets, museum/zoo/aquarium tickets, spa days, or special dinners can be gifted during the holidays and scheduled as joint activities for late January or mid-February. An art, pottery, or dance class starting in January could also be a very nice gift to go in on with a friend - you can sign up together and pay for each other’s spots.

Thrifty gifts

One of my controversial opinions is that I think we should all be re-gifting more: not just gifting things we were gifted that we would like to pass on, but thoughtfully re-gifting pre-loved items. One year, the lab I was in at Stanford did a White Elephant where the spending limit was $0: we had to regift things from home. And it was great. I ended up with the Broken Earth Trilogy books by NK Jemisin (highly recommend). Rob (my partner) brought five bars of soap that he had bought in a six pack and ended up not liking - a popular gift that ended up being stolen the maximum number of times. Someone else brought a bag of persimmons from a tree in his yard. It was a blast.

My other favorite ideas in this category include:

• Curating and gifting a bundle of books you’ve read to a friend or family member you think would enjoy them

• Thoughtfully gifting hand-me-down clothing that is high quality and in good condition but no longer fits you or suits you to someone you think would like and wear it

• Making gift baskets from miscellaneous home items: inspired by cute subscription boxes that contain many small items, this was a game I played during covid, when I sent my friends care packages comprised solely of items I found around my house: unopened chapsticks and hand lotions, essential oils, assorted tea bags, candy, face masks, etc. assembled nicely with a cute note

Then there’s the category of actual thrift-store gifts: my favorite is to look for beautiful, simple candle or tea light holders and pair them with the plain pillar or taper candles sold seasonally at Trader Joe’s or year-round from Ikea.

Consumable gifts

I also love to make, gift, and receive slightly luxurious consumable products: items that are designed to be used up so that they fulfill the category of getting “stuff” without adding more stuff to my house permanently. This is a know-your-gift-recipient category, but I particularly enjoy local honey, good coffee, bougie candles, and fancy hand soap. I once received some artisanal flavored tahini as a gift which was very very good and I never would have bought for myself.

I also like to make some home-made consumables for others, a category I call “yummy things in jars.” My favorites are preserved lemons, which feel fancy but are very easy and are extremely delicious in basically anything you would add salt and lemon juice to (you can preserve any citrus like this, the internet has many recipes) and homemade chili oil (I use this recipe). I also like these gifts because they give me an activity, filling a winter’s afternoon and early evening tinkering in the kitchen.

If you are the artsy type, I have also received sets of handmade cards as a holiday gift, which I use all year long for birthdays, weddings, and thank you notes.

Useful gifts

Another underrated gift category, in my opinion, are gifts that are purely practical. This was one pioneered by my Aunt Karen on Christmas, who would fill our stockings with chapsticks, batteries, hand sanitizer, socks, and the like - things that we likely would have bought ourself when we needed them, but basically never had to because our supply was refreshed annually. Individually wrapped, the presents still felt fun and we knew everything would get used.

Gift gifts

Finally, I do have some recommendations for actual stuff that can help winter feel cozy (these are not affiliate links and I don’t make any money if you buy any of this stuff…but I do love these things and so if any of these brands are reading this and want to pay me, hit me up). Here are a few of my most favorite things, in order from least to most splurgey:

• A rechargeable lighter, like this one, that both saves you from going through many plastic lighters and also will help you reach into the bottoms of candles that have been burned for some time.

• Mr. Coffee coffee warmer - the fancy Ember warming mug is on a lot of gift guides, and it seems great and will keep your coffee at a very specific temperature. But this is affordable and simple and, most importantly, this allows me to keep my drinks warm at my desk in the favorite mugs of my choosing.

• Dr. Teal’s body oil (I like both the lavender and the eucalyptus) and bath salts for dry winter skin and luxurious winter bath time.

• I have both received and given photo collage blankets as a gift, and they are always a hit.

• Splurge item: the Bearaby weighted blanket, which I have in purple and love and currently lives at my brother’s house and I miss so much that every time I go back to the US I wonder if it’s worth using most of a checked bag to bring it back to Amsterdam.

• Splurge item: the Fischersund Útilykt perfume. I write about this in How to Winter, but it is the most wonderful perfume that smells like Iceland outdoors in winter and one of my favorite-ever luxury gifts to myself. They also have a (slightly) more affordable mini solid perfume option which is very nice for travel.

• I do not actually own one of these sitting suits, but they are extremely pretty and seem ideal for outdoor winter activities, so if you buy one can you report back and let me know what you think? (Personally, I would go Big Purple).

Finally, may I be so bold as to suggest that my book, How to Winter, makes an excellent gift on its own or in addition to any of the above?

The holidays can be a time of joy and coziness and togetherness, but also of stress and angst and too much stuff. I hope that these ideas give you a bit of inspiration for gifts that help the act of gift giving feel more fun and meaningful and less stressful and spendy. I hope it helps you and others find more coziness and connection this holiday season and beyond.

If you do use any of these ideas for your gifts this season, I’d love to hear about it! Comment below or drop me a line at kari@karileibowitz.com.

Notes from the Slush Pile:

• Candles are a great gift but they might accidentally also come with some fire anxiety (from Catana comics)

• I was on NPR Life Kit talking about embracing winter this week!

• I’ll be taking my own advice and gifting home-made chili oil and preserved lemons to my Sinterklaas gift recipient this week. Sinterklaas is its own holiday in the Netherlands - separate from Christmas - celebrated from mid-November to early December. Despite wearing extremely similar outfits, Sinterklaas is not the same as Santa Claus; Sinterklaas does not reside at the North Pole or travel by reindeer, he comes to the Netherlands on a steamboat from Spain (an event that is televised in the Netherlands each year), and if children are naughty he threatens to take them back to Spain with him (somehow this is effectively scary for Dutch children and not seen as a warm-weather vacation).

  

  Absolutely not Santa Claus