With the upcoming holiday season, one thing that pops up seemingly everywhere are articles proclaiming “The Best Christmas Gifts of 2022!” After sorting through two articles that stood out to me, Good Housekeeping’s “35 Most Popular (and Trendy) Christmas Gifts of 2022”, and CBS Essentials’s “Holiday gift guide 2022: The best gifts under $50 this Christmas and Hanukkah.” I’ve managed to organize a few of the gift ideas into two main categories: ‘Affordable’ and ‘I Found It On TikTok’. Although about 90% of those articles were not useful gift ideas, I still managed to find some that were decent. 

The holiday season can be tough if you don’t have a job or a lot of money. If you’re on a budget this year, or just don’t like your friends enough to drop big bucks on them (hey, I don’t judge), there are still plenty of affordable presents you can dole out to people. The easiest and simplest of the options, as suggested by CBS, is a gift card. Personally, I find gift cards to be somewhat tacky, but at the same time I also don’t trust other people enough to know what kinds of things I like. I’d rather you just give me the money and I’ll figure it out. 

If you like your friends a little more than the baseline ‘here’s a gift card to somewhere, enjoy’, I suggest Squishmallows as a cute and affordable present. If you’ve never encountered a Squishmallow before, they are super squishy, super soft stuffed animals that all have personalities and backstories. As the proud new owner of my very first Squishmallow, a red octopus I’ve named Party Poison, I can confidently say that they are absolutely adorable.

For the most expensive of the ‘Affordable’ category of presents, we have an actually practical gift. If you’re like me and have friends who always seem to lose their keys or their phone (although it usually ends up being in the depths of their backpack), Apple AirTags would make a useful gift to receive. They start at $29 for a single AirTag, making them a fairly inexpensive gift. Although practical gifts are, well, practical, they can be pretty boring. 

One thing I noticed pop up over and over again was how little adults know about what teenagers want for the holidays. Every article I perused through suggested things that were popular on TikTok as gifts for teens. One gift that I found in Good Housekeeping’s article, and one that I have to admit looks super cool, is a moon lamp. With a cool galaxy-esque appearance, and 16 different colors, this moon lamp would be a very cool gift to give or receive. It’s also on sale for less than $25. Where would I put it? Who knows! Would I buy it knowing that I don’t have anywhere to put it? Absolutely!

Regardless of what holiday you celebrate or how much money you can spend this winter, I think we can all agree that those types of articles are just dumb fun. They don’t have the best gifts, but they can at least spark some ideas for what you might get for your buds.