Dec 06, 2025

December 2025: stocking-sized and table-sized

December lists have a distinctive shape: a small number of large purchases and a great many tiny ones. This year the tiny ones were bag clips, and there were a lot of them.

The stocking category

Collectible bag clips were the story of the month. Our readers bought the Barbie series three bag clip, the Cuphead series two bag clip, and the Yellowjackets series one bag clip in enough volume that we double checked the data. These are blind bags, so you do not know which figure you are getting, and they hit the exact price and size point that stockings and gift exchanges demand.

A fair warning, since we would rather say it than not: the appeal of a blind bag is uncertainty, and that is a mechanic worth being thoughtful about with children. Our readers who handle it well tend to buy one or two, frame it as a small surprise, and avoid the chase-the-rare-one dynamic entirely.

The centerpiece

The Barrington billiards air hockey table with accessories was the month's large item, continuing an autumn in which our community bought a genuinely surprising number of game tables. Everything we said in November applies: measure the room, measure the doorway, and recruit a second person for assembly.

The considered gifts

Oscar de la Renta New York eau de parfum was the fragrance pick of the season. Fragrance is one of the hardest categories to buy for somebody else, and the readers who bought this were nearly all replacing a bottle somebody had already finished, which is by far the safest way to do it.

the Prometheus Engineer pressure suit figure went to collectors, quietly and without fuss, as horror and science fiction figures tend to.

The house project

The one non-gift on the list was the Millennium Lighting Beverly three light fixture. December is an odd month for a lighting project, but readers who did it gave the same reason: guests were coming, and the fixture over the table had been bothering them for two years. Nothing motivates a deferred home project like the prospect of somebody else seeing it.

Looking back at the year

Across twelve months, the thing that stands out about our community is how practical it stayed. Even in December, the list is half small pleasures and half solving something. That is a healthier pattern than the season usually encourages, and it is a good note to end a year on.

A practical note to close the month. If you are assembling anything large on a holiday morning, read the instructions the night before and check that every part is in the box. Missing hardware is the most common problem with flat-pack game tables, and a missing bolt discovered at eight in the morning on a holiday is a uniquely frustrating experience that a five minute inventory the evening before would have prevented entirely.

We will see you in January, when this community reliably goes back to buying floor mats and detergent like nothing ever happened.