Your passive aggressive gift guide

What to get your mean aunt and creepy uncle

Every year I try to do a passive aggressive gift guide. Welcome to the 2024 guide! Christmas shopping for people you love is fun. But obligatory Christmas shopping for awful people? Not fun at all. But you can at least make it satisfying, by giving gifts that support great people or help out a worthy cause.

Do you resent having to spend money on people you don’t like? Have you been giving the same candle back and forth with your sister in law for six years? Want to spice things up this year? This is the guide for you.

For your Act Party member uncle who thinks David Seymour can do no wrong.

Buy them a copy of The Savage Coloniser Book and Big Fat Brown Bitch by Tusiata Avia. Two incredible collections that have been criticised by David Seymour and Act because not a single person in that party knows how to read a poem.

For maximum chaos give them a gift subscription to my newsletter - this will not work if they have a humiliation kink FYI but hopefully that’s not something you know about your uncle.

For your stepfather who only cares about womens’ sport when it gives him an opportunity to be a transphobe

He’s a misogynist so he’s found a perfect home with the TERFS. You’ve got a few options here. Why not buy him the gorgeous Gender Minorities Aotearoa calendar so he can get a monthly message about human rights. Or you can get this awesome Pronouns Matter tote from cute-as local shop Agnes and Edie.

Rainbow Youth is also a great charity to support in his name. You can also get him a gift subscription to Alice Soper’s newsletter Alice’s Soapbox because she gives great analysis of women’s sport, since he’s such a fan.

For your pregnant sister who is saying her child will only have heuristic wooden toys and you know it’s only a matter of time before her house is full of plastic shit but you can’t tell her that because she’ll bite your head off

Why not buy a toy library membership? This is a genuinely great gift for kids, it supports your local community while also not adding more toys to the world that are destined for landfill.

Your anti-vax cousin who is the most gullible person on the planet

Donate to The Conversation - it’s a unique collaboration between academics and journalists that is the world’s leading publisher of research-based news and analysis.

Their professional editors turn knowledge and insights from academics into easy-to-read articles, and make them accessible to readers. All of their writing is free to read and free to republish under Creative Commons. They are a not-for-profit company guided by a clear purpose: to provide access to quality explanatory journalism essential for healthy democracy.

Your brother-in-law who keeps complaining that as a straight white rich man he is a MINORITY who is ALWAYS WRONG because everyone is TOO WOKE

Sign him up to sponsor a child through Variety New Zealand.  Another great charity is Pillars – they support children who have parents in prison. JustSpeak is a youth-powered movement for transformational change of criminal justice towards a fair, just and flourishing Aotearoa. Even better, get him some PAPA merch!

Your grandfather who bets on the dogs and says ‘they love to race’

Sadly, most greyhound rescue centres are also pro-racing so steer clear there. But you can donate to HUHA – Helping You Help Animals Trust. They aren’t reliant on greyhound money to survive so they don’t suck up to the racing industry. They have no government funding and they save thousands of animals every year - from cows to ducklings.

Your Uncle who won’t stop talking about Hīkoi mō te Tiriti but he keeps calling it a hick-oy not a Hī-koi

Donate on their behalf to cover the costs of manaakitanga for everyone who went on the hīkoi. Give a Toitū te Tiriti Kaupapa Tamariki Tee by Melanie Tangaere-Baldwin or a MĀORI RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS Tote Bag from Moana Fresh.

Another great present would be a ‘pay-it-forward’ placard from Together for Te Tiriti!

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In all seriousness, there’s a lot of great gifts out there for people who don’t need more stuff to be sent to landfill.

Giving a donation or supporting a small business is a much better idea than buying the same cheap bath soaps that will never be used, then will be thrown out.

More than anything, families in Gaza need our help right now. If you can donate to a family in Gaza, you can use this downloadable gift card to let the person you’re gifting to know that you’ve done so.