I saw a man in a Checkers supermarket buy an air fryer for Christmas. He was delighted. He was a middle-aged man, grinning from ear to ear. Whether he was going to use it himself, or he’d bought this Philips air fryer for someone else while the specials were running hot, I have no idea.
What sort of Christmas gifts are people choosing in 2025?
Yes, times have been tight. Yes, people are watching their cents. But South Africans still splash out — even if it’s only small token gifts — because Christmas is less about price tags and more about the feeling: generosity, warmth, and a small bit of spoiling. Sometimes even gifts for strangers: a cold drink or a snack for the guy at the robots, a small parcel given quietly to the lady pushing the trolley of scrap metal down the road.
So what are people wrapping up this year?
The stuff flying off the shelves is mostly practical. Things that actually get used every day and save money or hassle.
Air fryers are still everywhere — you can’t walk through the appliance aisle without seeing someone wheeling one to the till.
Rechargeable power banks are another quiet bestseller; loadshedding might be better than it was, but nobody’s forgotten how it feels to sit in the dark. Some people want robot vacuums.
And for the big spenders, it’s a smartwatch or one of the new Samsung S25 phones — something that feels like an investment rather than a luxury.
There’s also a bit more playfulness creeping in this year. The Nintendo Switch 2 is impossible to find unless you queued online at midnight. The weird collectible plush toys — Fugglers and those ugly-cute things — are selling out faster than the shops can restock them. Even adults are buying the LEGO flower sets and pretending they’re “just for the coffee table”.
Then there’s the local stuff. More people than usual seem to be skipping the chain stores and going straight to the markets or the small Instagram shops.
Handmade leather wallets, proper coffee roasted in Joburg or Cape Town, skincare made in someone’s kitchen in Pretoria, Shweshwe cushion covers, beaded earrings, woven baskets from rural co-ops.
It feels deliberate: if money is going to leave my pocket, I’d rather it lands with someone I could bump into at the petrol station.
And finally, the gifts that cost almost nothing but land the hardest: the homemade ones. Jars of jam or chilli sauce with a handwritten label. A tin of fudge tied with string. Fresh mince pies still warm when you hand them over. Rusks that taste like your gran’s. Koeksisters that drip syrup on the car seat on the way home. Little stitched potholders, knitted dishcloths, tiny beaded angels for the tree.
In a year when every rand has had to fight for its life, these are the things people are choosing to give. And somehow that feels exactly right.
