Holiday Gift Guide 2023

Still no vaginal estrogen, but soon

If you are new here—well, welcome, for one thing! But also? I’ve been doing a holiday gift guide for a long time, and here’s some of the history:

Last year’s gift ideas are here.

• The year before that are here.

• The year before that are here.

• The year before that are here.

• The year before are here—and also there is a list there of links to the homemade gifts we've posted over the years. I'll add Our Fudge of Perpetual Sorrows because it is a perfect recipe and would make a great present for a sweet-toothed kind of person.

• The year before that are here.

• The year before, here.

• The year before, here.

• The year before that, here.

• The year before that, here.

• And the year before that, here.

• Some long ago thoughts (i.e. for little kids) are here.

These gift guides involve various revenue-earning affiliate links (the amazon and bookshop.org ones). I will earn a commission, and then I'll donate the money I make from them. In other words, this is something of a fundraiser, with the happy side effect of you doing your holiday shopping. But anything you see here? Try to buy it locally—especially if you have a local game and/or book store—and then just donate a little money to an organization doing great work. That way we support local businesses and it's still (kind of) a fundraiser. 

Also? This is going to be too long for an email, so you might want to switch to the web view or the app.

Photo of our absurd games shelves by Lindsay Hannah for Cup of Jo

There is a big list of games here.

Sometimes I cry playing Seafarers of Catan, but I still love it.

These are the games we play all the time and that never, ever get old; they're the ones I would start with, if you don't already have them:  ChineseCheckers,  Qwixx,  Sushi Go Party, Agricola, Azul, Splendor, Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers,  Yahtzee,  Ticket to Ride, Wingspan, Catan (with the Seafarers expansion), and Viticulture (plus the Tuscany expansion). (Please note: Some of these are real gamer games—long and with an instruction booklet that’s like Infinite Jest but written in hieroglyphics.)

Probably you’ve played Codenames, but if you haven’t? And you’re obsessed with Connections on the NYT site? Well, this is the game for you. Mostly, you are working with your team to get each other to guess words by giving one-word clues that multiple words have in common. Like, you say “ribs” to get them to guess celery and barbecue, only you hadn’t realized that torso was on the grid too, and they guess that and you’re screwed. (Edited to add: We’re now also obsessed with Code Names Duet as a two-player game. It’s fantastic.)

Codenames involves some amount of whispering. This must be an old picture because Ben’s hair (sob).

Hues and Cues is gorgeous and fun game. It feels almost impossible when you start. If you’re it you have to say a one-word clue—e.g. watermelon—and everyone has to put a piece on the color square they think you’re getting at.

Then you say a two-word clue for the same color—e.g. bright Valentine—and everyone places another piece. Eventually you put a little fence around the original square, and the closest people get the most points.

But the more you look at the grid, the more uncertain you are about colors and, well, anything else for that matter. It’s very strange and bonding.

I’ve described Patchwork different ways over the years. “If an engineer designed a game in consultation with your grandma, it would be Patchwork,” for example. And “Please note: the game box is depressingly ugly, like a quilt made by somebody’s misanthropic and colorblind great aunt.” But honestly? This is my favorite 2-person game of all time, and it’s the only game Michael and I play on our own. “Want to play Patchwork?” Michael will say, when I’m missing the kids and crying into his neck, and, yeah, sometimes I do. This would be a great gift for a fellow empty-nester.

Let me mention one little-kid game here, too. I got this Animal Upon Animal game for my little nephew because, even though I as a rule truly dislike holiday-themed games that you might end up depressingly playing in, say, April, this is so cute and we love this game and they don’t make the “small yet great” version I love anymore.

I also got my little nephew this pizza play-doh set, which Birdy did some deep-dive research on for me. This is another play-doh set that we’ve given lots of little friends and niblings.

Small interlude to say that this photo, which I took myself at the Scenter of the Universe flagship store, always makes me laugh. Brought to you buy the people who make “Cranberry Vanilla Eggnog Chai Christmas” and “Snow-Covered Evergreen Cheesecake.” You know, it’s. . . Hanukkah. The iconic fragrance of. . . Hanukkah. Is it latke-scented? Does it smell like unwrapped gelt melting near the menorah or perhaps a dreidel made of clay? Mothballs and schmaltz? You’ll never know.

Back to the beefier games. Someone once left an angry comment on my old blog because they could see in a photo that we had Power Grid? But I’d never reviewed it. (Okay, hostile gamer!) And somehow maybe I’ve still never reviewed it? There was a long stretch where Ben identified this as his favorite board game, and that is very high praise both because he has excellent taste and because we play a lot of excellent games. It’s a long one—like 3 hours—and kind of complicated, so if you wouldn’t describe yourself as a gamer, this is not the game for you. But it’s got the fun kind of land-grab elements of Risk without the epic boringness, and also some of the resource-gathering of a game like Catan, but the theme is generating a power grid for your cities. (Games are hard to describe in a fun way, okay?) Just know that if you’re like, “I *think* we probably have enough time to play this before dinner,” you definitely don’t.

Epic Power Gridding back in the day with cousins at the grandparents’ house.

Onto the puzzles! Oh, we have done lots and lots of puzzles over the years! For Christmas every year, my parents give us a decadent wooden puzzle from Liberty Puzzles, and they smell like a fireplace (in the best way) and are completely clever and amazing and they cost a fortune.

Lots of the pieces are shaped like recognizable things, and it’s so much fun to find them.

Know, though, that you have to work these from the inside out. You CANNOT put the outside together first, and if this is going to be a problem then this is not the puzzle for you.

They are true heirloom investments and will last forever.

Also, apparently, when you work on a Liberty puzzle, you look like you’re in Renaissance painting of everyone come to admire the baby Jesus?

Personally, I skew a little cheaper. I mean, ideally I’ll trade puzzles with friends or with folks on my Buy Nothing Facebook group—so really, really cheap. But when I’m buying puzzles as a host gift or for the holidays, I’ve been attracted to eeBoo puzzles lately.

Like this colorful, vaguely psychedelic mushroom puzzle, which we did last week.

My mom and I were supposed to be basting or braising or chopping something, but the puzzle kept calling to us like a siren song. If you do it while standing it doesn’t really count.

We’ve done this one too. Oh, and how cute is this? The pieces fit together beautifully and they’re always the perfect amount hard. We really lean into the puzzling in the winter, and I love to have some special ones to do.

Stocking stuffers! Or Hanukkah minis! I have been ordering things fromSusie Ghahremani’s boygirlparty since my kids were tiny. This year I got these cranky (do-not-want-)to-do list pads.

She has lots of other fun stuff, including darling stationery, notecards, and journals. Plus, she’s a real, actual person.

We are obsessed with Blackwing pencils—the luscious smoothness of them—and this year I got this lovely pearl variety (they write black). I am splitting them up over 4 stockings (I get to have my nephews this year), so this is not as decadent a purchase as it looks, though it is still very decadent.

This is a very fancy stocking stuffer.

Similar vibe, but much cheaper: Tajin glass rimmer.

These squishy scented mangos were the surprise hit of the stockings last year! I had to order one for my dad too, because he liked it so much.

I tend to give my kids Marlowe brand soaps and body washes because they smell great and they’re very unisex and wonderful. This year everyone is getting this black soap.

Another great-smelling thing is this Mrs. Meyers rhubarb hand soap. If they made a wearable fragrance of this, it would be my scent.

It makes my jaw cramp in the rhubarb way. It’s funny, trying to balance the things older kids actually need (Tide pods) with stuff that feels actually festive and fun (not Tide pods). Still working on it.

Okay, is this Diptyque fragrance sampler too expensive and extreme?

yes it is

Ben started wearing a Diptyque fragrance. Orpheon. The same one Phoebe Bridgers wears! It is crazily good smelling in a very bizarre and complicated way. Jo Malone is another brand my kids love, and this fragrance sampler set is more reasonably priced.

Love Happy Socks.

And I trust you are already going to RedBubble for all of your niche everything. Get it on a t-shirt, a sticker, a notepad, a hoodie. I just typed in “Taylor Swift cat” (Birdy’s 2 major obsessions) and there were 2600 results including this:

But for t-shirts this year, I ordered for the kids and nephews from here, in the style of this, but not this exact messaging:

I had this shirt made for Samantha Irby to make her laugh, and she did, and my whole life was thus complete and so I died. You could go very simple with something like “Yikes” or “What?” and it would be very funny imho.

Speaking of Samantha Irby:

This book is so unhinged and delicious. Michael is reading it now and every time he laughs out loud, I make him tell me what part he’s at and then I make him read it to me and then I take the book out of his hands so I can reread the whole thing.

A great gift book for the not-quietly-hostile crowd is this lovely collection of poetry about gardening, which includes poems by some of my favorite people, including Kirun Kapur and Ross Gay. It’s very pretty and has a ribbon placeholder and gorgeous illustrations and I’m giving it to my mom. Shhhh.

And a pair of cookbooks:

I seem not to be recommending any novels this year. There are so many of them! I am too overwhelmed!

Company and Tenderheart, which I am classily showing the LIBRARY COPIES of! I am thinking of purchasing both of them for myself, but they would make great gifts. Company is not as radically casual as you might imagine? But it is very thrilling and I love it, I love Amy Thielen’s memoir, and I now add finely grated cheddar to my dill dip thanks to her. Tenderheart has not one but two recipes for pasta with cabbage and is, thus, and perfect book—approachable, inspired and inspiring, delicious.

I got my little nephews this book because I am obsessed with Sophie Blackall.

And finally? In case you need to send gifts to people in a work or gratitude capacity? Burdick’s chocolates are my very favorite. And they’re gluten-free to boot.

Thank you for reading my epic poem about conspicuous consumption! I will be sharing some less shopping-y holiday ideas in the next little stretch, too—getting my hippy bullshit on. Please join me.

xo