🌻 The Anti-Gift Guide: What NOT To Buy This Holiday Season


Gifts that look good, feel good, and DO good.

It’s that time of year again. When every brand you’ve ever interacted with (if only via a few, long-ago clicks) begins force-feeding you a list of “must-haves” for the holiday season.

Things you need. Things your mom needs. Your partner needs. Your best friend needs. But you know what they’re not telling you? You don’t need it.

Really. You don’t need more plastic. You don’t need more expensive, poor-quality clothes you’ll forget about come springtime. And you don't need yet another useless trinket that's just going to sit on your shelf and collect dust, unforgotten for a few years until it hits the landfills.

I get it. I’m no scrooge. People like to exchange and share and generally spread merriment. I’m all for that.

But before you click ADD TO CART for these classic holiday gifts, maybe do a double-take. Can you find a more ethical, more minimalist version instead?

Here are 5 gifts NOT to waste your money on this year—and better, less-evil alternatives.

THE SHORTLIST: what NOT to buy this holiday season (& what to consider instead)

  1. Replace books from Amazon >> local, independent bookstores
  2. Replace sweaters made out of plastic >> handmade, woolen sweaters
  3. Replace cutesy mugs that no one ever uses >> fair-trade, organic tea
  4. Replace personal care products that pollute the enviornment >> certified organic options
  5. Replace any random, unnecessary material good >> the gift of knowledge and inner peace

MORE ARTICLES ON MINDFUL CONSUMPTION

May your holidays be meaningful,

Merry

NOW GO ON YOUR MERRY WAY...

👋 Questions? Comments? Salutations? I love to hear from you. Just hit REPLY and send me a note.

💌 Like these emails? Perhaps a friend would, too. Please FORWARD them this email.

🔔 Did someone forward you this email? Welcome to A Merry Loner, the blog that helps you learn to enjoy your own company. Sign up here to join the mailing list.

Merry of "A Merry Loner"

A space to learn how to enjoy your own company and make life less scary and more exciting.

Read more from Merry of "A Merry Loner"

Stories to push you forward. For those born with an innate sense of wanderlust, it can be difficult to imagine there are others who don’t share the same yearning to move. But for some, traveling isn’t a series of glittering memories. When prompted to pack a suitcase and brave the rails, road, or sky, be it across the world or a stone’s throw away, they see not picturesque walks along riverbanks, new aromas wafting their way, or foreign tongues catching their ears. They see long queues,...

Shifting just a few purchases to locally owned stores makes a difference as we fight the good fight against mass production and megacorporations. In the last quarter of 2025, in a turn of events that stunned no one, OpenAI announced its move towards agentic commerce, allowing U.S. ChatGPT users to buy items directly in the chatbox. As an aside, let’s not forget that ChatGPT’s self-proclaimed mission is “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” How encouraging...

One Christmas alone doesn’t mean all Christmases will be alone. This year may be a quiet moment—that’s okay. Spending Christmas alone is a lot more common than people realize. A Mission for Michael (AMFM) conducted a survey in December 2025, combining the results with US census data to estimate how many people will spend Christmas alone this year: 16.3 million. But spending the holidays alone isn’t just an American phenomenon. A study by the Policy Institute at King’s College London found...