Graphic: Rebecca Fassola
Gift giving can be hard at the holidays, but it can be even harder when you haven’t spent any time with your intended recipient for the past nine months, won’t be there to explain the gift, and just don’t know what it is your sister’s kids are into anymore. That’s why we put together a special gift guide for this socially distant holiday season to help you connect better with your family from far away. We’ve curated it to include items for those times when there’s just nothing to talk about on Zoom, games you can play from far away, and ways grandparents can try to feel connected to their grandkids. It’s been a tough year. Maybe a few of these items can help bridge those distances for a little while longer.
7 Comments
Oh, I LIKE this list!I was gifted a pair of Sesame Street-themed Bombas socks a while back (a different, more subtle style, but still reminiscent of the character), and they are my favorite pair – the very first ones I wear out of the wash each week. I love them, and they make me feel like a kid again.Cameo is pretty cool, too. I had a friend commission a Cameo video for me for my birthday from one of my favorite celebrities, and it was just what I needed.Guess Who is fun right out of the box, but you can take it to a whole new level by customizing it. I followed this Instructable and was the hit of my (pre-pandemic) game night when I broke out the board filled with photos of our friend group.Goldbelly is fun for giving someone a little taste of home when they’ve moved far away, but it can be very pricey.
The one that I’m curious about is the Jackbox Party Pack / Quiplash. I’ve seen it advertised quite a bit in those sketchy clickbait ads at the bottom of some websites. I have a longstanding policy of never clicking those, but do I understand correctly that it’s made by the “You Don’t Know Jack” team? I haven’t thought about those games in years, but they were fantastic. I’d be willing to give it a try based on their reputation alone. Anyone have any firsthand experience with these games that they’d be willing to share?
You can take Guess Who? to a whole new level by drinking.
There’s also lots of sites for playing board games online – I hear good things about codenames’ online implementation, and I’ve played lots of games on boardgamearena.com. My board game group has been enjoying that site – the main UI is rough, but the games themselves are well implemented. As long as one player has a paid account, the whole group can play any game, not just the few free ones.
Anybody have a problem with the black guy card in the middle of the Guess Who? hand?
I think in the context of how cartoony *all* the characters are it’s probably marginally ok (?), but I dunno. I prefer the off-brand one my daughter has with anthropomorphized animals – Guess Zoo.
Just putting it out there: seems to me an unprecedented opportunity for someone to get snitty and sound off on the internet.
I recently discovered that all the animal ambassadors at zoos and animal rescues who would normally be doing classroom visits and things do zoom calls now, so you can arrange for a zoom call with an exotic animal for you and your long-distance loved ones. Eg, One of my aunts is a big bird watcher, so for $30 I’m going to arrange for her and her grandchildren in various other states to have a zoom call with a hawk from our local bird rescue org. Lots of zoos offer something like this, but they vary wildly in price and animals available, so a little comparison shopping might be in order.