Gift Guide #5: Your Boyfriend (or Husband) Who Makes Pancakes for Your Kids and Never Met a Bookstore He Didn’t Love.
A red beanie (everyone looks cute in one), $58, or gloves from an alpaca farm in Montana, $23, to keep him warm all winter.
A “rip-roaring” “gorgeously reported” book about New York from 1986-1990, $30, or one of the best novels you read this year, so you can hear his thoughts.
The Magic Eye book we all went nuts over in the ’90s. (Do you think we can still do it???) $10.
Taiwanese dried fruit you know he’d love, $31 for three.
A favorite photo, framed. From $26.
Candle table lamp, from $20, for cozy nights and mornings. (This sold out quickly! Similar option here.)
A pocket puzzle, like a ripple, love, or rocket. From $15.
A gorgeous monogrammed weekender bag. I absolutely love these (it’s on my wishlist, too!). I gave one to Freddie early on in our relationship, and he’s used it for so many weekend adventures, plus everyday errands and bookstore runs. They’re 100% cotton and come in nine colors, $195. (There’s a smaller “weekday” size, too.)
A brain-teasing book full of logic games, crossword puzzles, and Spelling Bee spin-offs, to enjoy together on lazy weekends. $38.
A donation in his name to Read Ahead, a non-profit that pairs volunteer mentors with NYC kids to read together weekly during school lunchtime.
A card saying how much you love him, since that’s all he really wants anyway. $5.50/priceless.
P.S. The 2024 gift guide for husbands, the 2023 gift guide for husbands, and the 2022 gift guide for husbands.
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Tags: 2025 holiday gift guide, gift guide, gifts, gifts for husbands, gifts for men
Comments
79 commentsIf you like the LED candlestick idea, my favorite is from Graypants! This post inspired me to get one for my husband. :) https://graypants.com/product/wick-s/
I legit just got vertigo and flash backs to the 90s looking at that image of the magic eye lol
Great ideas! I just bought my brother a gift that I’m going to get for my husband too. It’s a flip comb for on the go and it has a Talented Mr Ripley vibe
just ordered like 10 magic eye books for all the kids in my life! do y’all remember going to the SHOPPING MALL to see the magic eye posters on display?!
My husband and I are trying a new thing this Christmas – not getting each other gifts but instead getting all dressed up and going to a fancy restaurant. And of course now that we’re not buying each other anything, I’m finding so many things that he’d love! Like the caramels from the 2025 Mom gift guide. Gah!
THIS is the brother!
Correct!
Turned 40 this year and fully embracing the old person life! So this is an old person gift recommendation for a husband. My gorgeous, very funny and cool husband is into indigenous plants- think beautiful colourful South African succulents, wild grasses and bright flowers that need little care to thrive. This is what is on his list this year to make our garden bloom.
Wrong that I’m more into the Brother than the Boyfriend in the CoJ gift guide universe?
Nope: there is no wrong answer.
Not wrong. Brother is way hotter. This youngster looks like my sons boyfriend.
Still have that Magic Eye book from my childhood, trying to get my kids into it!!
If your man (or male adult child) loves/collects fun t-shirts/sweats the Out of Print company has a nice sale going on. Or, is a on the go trail mix lover, Nature’s Garden has a sale going on multi packs. Both make nice stocking stuffers. Books-bookmarks-book lights-ebook digital gift card-one year I bundled a bookstore gift card with their in house coffee cafe gift card that went over well.
Is that my boyfriend? He’s 17!
hahaha
Ha!! My thought exactly. Absolutely I would have been into this face – in high school?!
yah,I never see this boyfriend because he’s always playing fortnite with his friends and has a big AP bio test coming up
Oh shoot Sarah, he meant to text you back he just forgot to press send
@Sarah Levy @Joy hahahaha
LOVE seeing Read Ahead on your list. I worked with Read Ahead as a program coordinator for a few years, at a school on the lower east side and it’s the BEST. Kids and adults read together during a student’s lunch hour at their school. It’s lovely mentoring with literacy thrown in. Super enriching for kids and adults alike.
As an alternative beanie option, may I suggest Telleson. It’s a brand my husband appreciates because many of their items are made in the US. Their beanie is $38 and knit in New Jersey and finished in Brooklyn. For my local South Jersey friends, Odd Folk in Collingswood also carries these hats (shop local!). If this link does not work, just google it. 🙃 WATCH CAP Cotton (Off White) – Tellason.com https://share.google/9E1ISVgsZ1ZcaXb9h
Thanks for that tip. I noticed that Telleson has an amazing blanket lined coverall jacket – pricey, but it looks so well made and practical.
The tote is v cool!! Cheaper option: https://www.baublebar.com/products/custom-alpha-tote-putty And of course can’t go wrong with a classic LL Bean boat and tote! So fun to customize with their name/nickname/inside joke.
We have stopped exchanging gifts in our family, but I look forward to these gift guides for the way that the titles feel like little in-joke love notes to the people in your lives. <3
Agree :)
Love the beautifully packaged Taiwanese dried fruit! If I can offer an alternative for anyone looking for interesting snacks in bright packages – try a field trip to your local asian supermarket or grocery store (any part of asia – India, Thai, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc.)! Lots of cool stuff to discover and your dollars will go directly to an immigrant owned and operated small business – more important than ever during these turbulent times <3
Ditto for Latino and Middle Eastern markets! In addition to intriguing snacks and shelf items, my neighborhood Asian market also carries very lovely produce that I just can’t get at “regular” grocery stores – herbs, leafy greens, various eggplant varieties and fresh ginger (not the past-its-due-date dry, stringy stuff.)
YES…. all my adult stocking stuffers are treats from our locally owned specialty food store, small business spice merchant, locally made chocolate shop and hot sauce from our mexican market. I couldn’t on the replenish every year.
These gift guides are always so funny to me. We are a specific list family, so I know exactly what clothing item or random fishing implement my husband wants. Saves us from getting a bunch of random stuff we don’t really need.
Cate, I learned very early in my marriage that my husband does NOT like the element of surprise. He tells me exactly what he wants and doesn’t even need to open wrapping paper haha! (I’m the opposite!)
we take it a step further and just don’t do gifts?! if you want a fishing implement, go ahead and buy it yourself! I guess gift giving and receiving is straight up not our love language (for my husband or I, nor my immediate family).
We are a specific list family as well. The only surprises are small stocking stuffers. However, I’m still a sucker for a good gift guide and read them all!
I know, now that I have kids, getting holiday gifts for my spouse feels kind of condescending or infantilizing. Like, I’m a grown woman, I can decide if I want an iPad, don’t get it for me. But I lived out of a backpack for my 20s, so I came to view stuff as a hassle.
If we want or need something we buy it for ourselves, so for the adults in my life, gifts are truly about giving something thoughtful the person wouldn’t have thought of themselves. For a long time, my husband and I had stopped exchanging Christmas and Birthday gifts with each other, but now that our kids are 6 & 3, we realized we want them to see mom & dad receive gifts too, partially so we can model showing gratitude when receiving gifts, and also to show that adults can get in the spirit of the holidays too. Weirdly, little kids LOVE watching grown ups open presents! My husband and I always thoughtfully fill each other’s stockings, which is where most of the unknown surprise is, and then we usually buy ourselves something we need or want and wrap it from the other person and act surprised. For other adults in my life, I usually stick to a small/fun food or drink gift.
Yes Anna. Gift giving for my husband and I has ramped up because the kids love it. I just got off the phone with my husband to review the gift that our son will be giving him, that he will pick up when he does errands at lunch today. HA.
“Since that’s all he really wants anyway” yes! The emblematic sentence has found a really good place… it warms my heart every time I read it! Love from Paris
Me too! I love that ending in COJ gift lifts. It always makes me happy.
Same!! It’s perfect. You can tell they tailor the gift ideas to items from smaller businesses or brands they really love, and it always ends with a reminder you can donate to a charity or just get someone a card to show your love which is what a gift is all about. I couldn’t love this blog more if I tried.
The Gods of New York was one of the best books I read this year—can’t recommend it highly enough.
Does anyone know if the Alex Milk totes go on sale?
Always enjoy the annual gift guides thanks COJ! I’m amused that my husband is the exact opposite of the described boyfriend or husband here (can’t cook; doesn’t read)
LOLLLLLL same!
Ha- I came here to say the same thing! My husband, awesome father and amazing man, would really scratch his head at a handheld logic puzzle! I love that there’s such a range of people represented in these gift guides. Maybe next year the husband can be an every-day-carry gymbro who loves to do yard work on a Saturday morning!
Guys, I have never been able to do Magic Eye! No matter what I do I can never see anything. Learning now from the comments that this might indicate colorblindness?! Does Magic Eye not “work” for anyone else and does this always mean colorblindness?? 😂 please advise, thank you!!
Lisa, I have ALSO never been able to do the Magic Eye thing (those books were a torture to me as a kid!) and I am definitely not colorblind–I actually even took one of those tests to measure how well you perceive color/hue and got a perfect score. And I’m able to do other perception-shift things with my vision, I just cannot make these Magic Eye things work for me. Who knows?! But: solidarity.
I spent hooooouuurs as a kid/teen trying to see these and never did, I’m not colorblind. I’m now 46, this summer I was at a friends house and picked the book up commenting about my failure. As soon as it started to get blurry I slowly expanded my vision (kind of blurry eyes making a small circle around the page starting from the center?) and the image popped out! I was able to see all of them and it was VERY. EXCITING. I feel like it’s one of those things that you can’t really teach someone to do, you just need to get it (or not)!
My mum can’t do them and she has an astigmatism?
My “trick” for these books looks very silly but always worked for me as a kid: I’d put the book up to my face so it touched my nose and would not focus on the picture. Then I would sloooowly pull the book back away from me, continuing not to focus, and magically the pictures would tend to work for me. Sometimes if I pulled the book back too fast, I would lose the 3D picture and would have to start over again.
Optometrist here! Color vision deficiencies shouldn’t impact your ability to do Magic Eye pictures. In order to get the 3D effect, you need to diverge your eyes. In other words, think about looking through the image at a distance point directly behind it. You might think about how your eyes feel when you’re zoning out or daydreaming. The image will start to go double and eventually lock into place and become clear. Some people have a lot of trouble with this! Spoiler: The book cover image in this post is an elephant.
Lisa, I’ve never been able to do them either. Turns out, I have a visual processing disorder that causes me to lack depth perception. Something to look into!
While I haven’t tried one of these in decades… the trick is to stare at the picture like you are disassociating, like when you’re not just staring at your screen but when your staring at your screen into space, where your eyes goes a bit crossed and everything gets a bit fuzzy. Please someone tell me I’m not the only one that does this lol
Stefanie, you perfectly described me every day at work at 3pm (disassociating, staring through my computer screen into space)
I just love how these end with donation prompts. You’re the best.
Am I the only one who read the title and thought, “Wait! Why did Joanna say ‘boyfriend (or husband)’—does that mean an announcement pending?” and then realize that no, she just meant the man in your life. Joanna, it really is so fun seeing a small peek of your life with Freddie. I’m in a pretty unhappy-at-times marriage and I’m not sure how things are going to turn out and it makes me happy to see people finding happy wholesome sexy love after divorce.
YES! I divorced at the same time as Joanna and I really needed way more models of happily thriving divorced women. But now I am one :) Can confirm that happy wholesome sexy love after a divorce is a thing.
The “lost New York” thing is too soon for me… 💀 the only miss on an otherwise great list
Just when we were all getting over green sweatshirt guy….red beanie guy shows up! Hahaha!
Hahahahahaa
Right?!!!
Literally my first thought when I opened COJ today!
Can we find Green Sweatshirt Guy (GSG) and do a week of outfits with him? I think we all need more GSG in our lives.
or maybe Sara we find Green Sweatshirt Guy (GSG) and do a week of him without outfits?
Sarah, I like the way you think!
Hahaha!
LOVE Yun Hai dried fruit! Such a delight to see them here :D
All I can say to the beanie… Interns don’t get hats!!!!! IYKYK.
LOL
We did this as a group Halloween costume in the aughts, and I was the intern that got cleavered. One of my top Halloweens for sure.
Magic eye! YASSS! I can so easily slip into lazy eyes mode at the end of this long workday and spy the image. My colorblind husband can’t ever see them? Anyone else?
Yes!!! If you’re colorblind you often can’t see the difference between colors on these pages — when you’re a kid getting tested for colorblindness they’ll show you a page and ask if you see a star or see a circle, and if not, you can’t differentiate between, say, red and green. So interesting, right? xoxo
Anna, now I’m imagining you hiding from your husband by wearing a shirt that matches the wallpaper like Zach Braff in that one GARDEN STATE poster.
bahahah Lauren O. my husband is colorblind and that would 100 percent work on him!
I’m colorblind and can never see the Ishihara plates, but I can 100% do the Magic Eye. I think they are using different eyeball mechanisms (rods/cones vs. monocular/bionocular, but I’m no expert).
I am coveting that weekender bag too! Can I ask if it feels stiff or soft?
It’s definitely structured — does that help? I’d say more stuff than soft.
Yes, very helpful, and what I was hoping for. Thank you Joanna.
The book recs link/page! What a treasure trove.
A heads up to COJ team: some of the links on the (very appreciated) book roundup page accidentally link to your Howl login page, not the actual book purchase page. I noticed it on My Name is Lucy Barton and An American Marriage but there may be others. (Linking is a tedious thing! Thanks for creating that page in the first place!)
Thank you! These should be fixed now.