10 gift ideas for the 2022 holiday season
Nov. 28—Looking for some unusual and fun holiday gifts? Our gift guide's got you covered. Read on for 10 great gift ideas for lovers of the outdoors, books, Broadway, games, food and more.
1. Move over, pickleball — Jazzminton Sport is on your tail. It's an indoor-outdoor game played with paddles and birdies and a unique net with a horizontal cutout. There are no boundaries. No court is required. Setup is simple. Two people play. Just bat the birdie back and forth through the hole until the winner reaches an agreed-upon point number. $199.99.
2. Wordle: The Party Game. Did you see it coming? Hasbro and The New York Times have made the get-it-in-six daily treat a board game. In each round, a player picked as host writes down a five-letter word. Others must figure it out in, you guessed it, six tries, competing to do it in the least number of attempts. Dry-erase boards and familiar color coding are used. $19.99.
3. The folks at children's toy company Melissa & Doug, melissaanddoug.com, have boxed sets of wooden puzzles marked for ages 3 and up. Choose from four dinosaurs or four household pets; the lid serves as an assembling tray, and the wood box makes for easy storage. The company's got jigsaws with sound effects, too, to delight the littlest puzzlers. Choose from a farm, firehouse, zoo, orchestra and more, including licensed character tie-ins.
4. Culture writer Esther Zuckerman takes a fun and novel approach to the Oscars red carpet in her coffee-table book "Beyond the Best Dressed: A Cultural History of the Most Glamorous, Radical and Scandalous Oscar Fashion" (Running Press). In 25 essays, with illustrations from Montana Forbes, Zuckerman looks at everything from Hattie McDaniel's turquoise gown, worn to the segregated ceremony in 1940, to Sharon Stone's white Gap T-shirt, to the dress Rita Moreno wore in both 1962 and 2018.
5. For whatever reason, considering all the Lego sets and all the TV shows in the land, folks are frothing for Lego's 1,164-piece set based on the Emmy-winning "The Office." It's Dunder Mifflin down to the tiniest detail and includes 15 mini-figures of the show's main characters. A dozen of the figures have two facial expressions when the heads are turned around. Classic scenes come to life in Jim's teapot, Michael's World's Best Boss mug and Dwight's Jell-O-encased stapler. $119.99.
6. At $129.99 a year, the streaming service BroadwayHD serves up full-length stage plays and musicals, including exclusive livestreams. It's an unlimited, on-demand library of more than 300 theater productions from Broadway, the West End and beyond. There are some ballets and concerts, too. Not looking to spend that much? Buy a month or two at $11.99 each.
7. Check out "From Gay to Z," by Justin Elizabeth Sayre. Sayre is not a historian. Instead, they (their chosen pronoun) are a playwright and performer who turned their five-part stage show "GAyBC's" into a compendium of gay culture. Acknowledging they couldn't cram the entirety of queer culture into one book, they do a pretty good job in quick bites on everything from the AIDS activist group ACT UP to Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian film and opera director known for romantic and lavish productions. $24.95. Chronicle Books.
8. Foodies should look into "Emily in Paris: The Official Cookbook," by Kim Laidlaw. Filled with 75 recipes inspired by the Netflix series, there's lots of food porn here, along with photos of ex-pat Emily (Lily Collins) as fans await Season 3. Remember Gabriel's omelette? It's in there. How about that moment Emily was struggling to pronounce "un pain au chocolat"? The tasty croissant is included, too. $32.50. Weldon Owen.
9. Barbie pink has crept into home decor, beauty and accessories, and Barbiecore has hit heavy on Instagram and TikTok. There are plenty of ways to gift the trend, including with some affordable pops of wearable pink. The brand Good American has lots. There's a pair of skinny corduroys for $120, a leather bomber jacket for $175 and a body hugger of a midi dress for $99. A pink leather bando, a cropped long-sleeve V-neck collegiate style sweater, a jumpsuit, bodysuit, rugby shirt, pocket T-shirt — the company has thought of it all. Head to GoodAmerican. com.
10. Can't think of anything unusual? Research and reach for a special bottle. There are too many variables and options for too many palates to make one solid recommendation, but special splurges abound. Consider Garrison Brothers Distillery, garrisonbros.com, for bourbon. It has a range of price points.
