As you plan your holiday shopping this year, here are our top 12 best Christmas gifts for 2021. What’s your favorite way to choose joy at Christmas?
Hear from 12 of our celebrity and influencer partners about their favorite ways to choose joy through Christmas giving!
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Our 12 best Christmas gifts for 2021
Christmas gift #1: A goat and two chickens
As the holidays quickly approach, it’s easy to get wrapped up (no pun intended) in the hustle and bustle of the season. Choosing to intentionally slow down and stay present and joyful during the season is what we continue to strive for here at Pacific Thyme farm.
It’s been four years since we moved to this land that we now call home. We began the process of working the soil, growing our own food, and growing our farm family. The goats and chickens serve as a very essential part of the farm. The chickens provide beautiful organic eggs, and our goats are a wonderful help with farm clean up. They also bring us so much joy! Watching them grow and providing them food from the garden feeds into the entire ecosystem. It’s also a great opportunity to teach our children how to care for the animals.
Goats and chickens can fill a need for families and communities facing food shortages and poverty. We can help support World Vision, and their programs that empower these families all over the world, by gifting chickens and goats to families and communities in need. I can’t think of a better way to choose joy this holiday season.
Christmas gift #2: Be chosen by a child
I’m so honored, humbled, and grateful to share about my family’s experience with World Vision’s Chosen child sponsorship program and the little girl in Tanzania who chose us as her sponsor!
We surprised our six boys with the opportunity for our family to be chosen as a sponsor by a child back in February — it has been one of the greatest gifts we could have been given. They regularly ask how she’s doing, pray for her, read her letters, and send her gifts. While we’re helping support her and her family, we’re truly receiving the greatest blessing as we learn and grow and give.
I so encourage you to be a part of this experience and bless someone in your life and a child and family in another part of the world this Christmas!
Christmas gift #3: “Love and Grace” silver-toned necklace by Danica McKellar
It was my joy to help select the beautiful details of this silver-toned necklace. I hope everyone feels the joy of the holiday season while wearing this beautiful necklace crafted by fair-trade artisans in India.
Helping to design the “Love and Grace” necklace was meaningful to me, and I loved teaming up with artisans.
So I’m excited to share this necklace! I love wearing special pieces of jewelry, and this makes the perfect gift for other mothers this holiday season — donations for the necklace go to World Vision’s programs that empower vulnerable kids and families around the world.
Christmas gift #4: “Around the Table” color-block salad servers by Leanne Ford
My wish for you this holiday season is that you be blessed while blessing others. When you give a handcrafted gift from World Vision’s Gift Catalog, like the salad servers I helped design, you’ll help empower people all around the world out of poverty for good.
I love that these salad servers are handcrafted by artisans in India. They earn fair wages to support their families, and they also get resources to make it through tough times like this pandemic. This year, kids and families in poverty need help more than ever. And so, it’s been a joy to partner with World Vision to feature these handcrafted salad servers in their Gift Catalog.
I love these salad servers. I love designing and I love designing with artisans. And then I love it, on top of that, when my design has a beautiful cause, so this was pure joy. Salad servers were a really natural thing for me to help create because I love using them. I love hosting. I love presenting a beautiful plate.
Christmas gift #5: “Circle of Strength” upcycled coasters by Breegan Jane
When you plan your holiday shopping, this year I want to ask you to do more: Choose joy and give gifts that give back. I’ve partnered with World Vision to help come up with a set of coasters that can help you help children and families lift themselves out of poverty.
I love the details of these coasters, and everything that goes into them. Women artisans in Tanzania, some of them refugees, weave these gorgeous pieces by hand. They use recycled fibers and local grasses with traditional techniques. They’re sustainably made, beautiful, and more importantly, women empowering.
These artisans were affected just like many small businesses across the globe. This year is going to be about so much more than just gift-giving, and this is a fantastic way to start. It’s the year to do more.
This is the year to give the gift of beauty and choose joy through action. I want you to choose joy this year and give a gift that’s beautiful and does a whole lot more.
Christmas gift #6: “Bonded Together” tote by Wé McDonald
My faith in God keeps me humble; it keeps me strong. During the holiday season, I keep noticing that this is about so much more than just me. That’s why giving back is a blessing — it blesses me, but it also blesses someone else.
What I love most about my tote is that it’s big. I am a girl who has a lot of stuff with her at all times, and I know women don’t have pockets most of the time. So I’m happy that the bag is not only functional but also it comes from women artisans who are disabled in Viet Nam, and you get to see that their work pays off.
These women get fair wages and that’s very important because to be an independent woman in countries like that is almost unheard of. They can own their work and become business savvy and work well with other women, and that’s an experience that you cannot take for granted.
When you look at the tote, think of the women who made this bag for you. How can you not feel joy in something that somebody out there made specifically for you to enjoy? So when you fill it up and take it with you, not only do you have an amazing, beautiful, cute, big bag, you have a story to tell.
Christmas gift #7: “Further Together” waxed string bracelets by Kristoffer Polaha
What it means to choose joy this Christmas season is to allow yourself to be fully impacted by the Christian narrative. If you can truly unpack how profound that story is, then you’re left with no other choice but to choose kindness, love, joy.
The reason I love Christmas so much is it’s the season when the days are darkest. There’s no light but then, all of a sudden, we’re reminding ourselves that there’s a light beyond all of that — that’s joy.
With these bracelets, you get three of them which can be like father, sons, and friends. I also like the idea that they could represent the Trinity. And then, when you give this gift, you’re supporting people around the world to rise out of poverty into sustainability. Since COVID-19 hit the whole world, the fact that you can have an impact globally by making a donation here in the States is pretty awesome.
So when you give these bracelets, it’s a way that you can choose joy. You can choose love. You can choose faith. And as you’re moving through the world, you can look down at your wrist and see a reminder to go through the world trying to bring the kingdom here on earth.
Christmas gift #8: “These Three Remain” rose gold–toned bracelet by Melissa Joan Hart
Choosing joy at Christmastime is so important. I know a lot of people are suffering around the world, whether it’s because they live in poverty, or they’re hungry, or they’ve lost someone and they’re not celebrating with their family this year. But I try to focus on the center of Christmas — that Jesus came for us.
I think it’s more important than ever to partner with World Vision this year because of what the whole world has been through. The bracelet that I’m featuring in the Gift Catalog is made by women artisans in India. India was hit so hard by the pandemic. This helps them out so they can creatively support their families and then, the donation will go to help World Vision’s other endeavors around the world and in the U.S. — and you can give someone a really pretty gift!
The handcrafted gifts can help people choose joy this season, because you get to give someone a gift and, at the same time, those donations equip World Vision to help people in need.
I hope when people wear this bracelet that they think about the three things that are on there: faith, hope, and love. We need these three things so much, especially around the holidays.
Christmas gift #9: “The Tie that Binds” wrap bracelet by Meagan Good
World Vision’s Gift Catalog is going to be part of my Christmas tradition. I want to encourage people not just to look at my bracelet, but to look at all the cool things that they can share with someone.
When you share a gift like my bracelet, you’re not just saying, “Here, this is something for you. I care about you.” You get to say, “This is something that will help someone else, too.”
My handcrafted gift helps people choose joy because it’s directly connected to prayerfully giving someone else joy — the person who is the recipient of the bracelet, but also the person who gets blessed because you donated to impact their life.
It helps me choose joy because I believe that it’s making a difference. I know that it’s making a difference. And it helps everyone else that’s a part of it or connected to it choose joy because they’re part of making a difference as well.
Christmas gift #10: “Wrapped in Hope” dip-dyed scarf by Patricia Heaton
I love scarves — I have a ton of them! This “Wrapped in Hope” dip-dyed scarf is made by beautiful women artisans in Viet Nam who have been making silk scarves and other items for many, many years. You can get this scarf for free for a $100 donation to the World Vision Fund.
It’s funny to think that Christmas shopping could bring joy. A lot of times it’s a hassle, but through the World Vision Gift Catalog, you can find joy while shopping because it’s easy and you’re going to make a difference in a person’s life.
Joy is something that you can choose regardless of your circumstances. As a Christian knowing what the bigger picture is — what our lives are about and who is actually in control — made it easier to find those joyful moments during the difficulty of last year.
It’s a very joyful opportunity to celebrate this holiday season with a gift from World Vision. It can remind you that you used your resources to make someone else’s life better. We need that little shot of joy every day in our life.
Christmas gift #11: Clean water
I hadn’t truly understood the joy that the gift of clean water brings until I spent some time in rural Africa with World Vision.
Most of us couldn’t imagine even dipping our toes in some of the water sources that people around the world drink from. And yet so many people live their whole lives with stomach pain or diarrhea from drinking unclean water. More than 800 children under the age of 5 die every day from diarrhea caused by contaminated water, poor sanitation, and unsafe hygiene practices. And millions of women and children walk an average of 6 kilometers every day to get that water that makes them sick.
I will never forget meeting Mera in Zambia. She had been bedridden before World Vision started working in her village. Her young granddaughters often missed school to care for her. I met Mera a few months after World Vision drilled a borehole and equipped Mera and her community with clean water. Mera was literally standing up and dancing for joy, singing a song of praise! Her granddaughters were able to attend school again and were dreaming of their futures. What a gift!
And Mera wasn’t the only one in her community filled with joy! So many stories shared, so many lives changed — all because of clean water. Choose joy through clean water this holiday season!
Christmas gift #12: Giving Tuesday
I’ve often struggled with the notion that I want to help, but the problems of the world seem so overwhelming that I’m not sure where to start. One of the reasons that I love partnering with World Vision is that their impact is evident in the areas of the world that need help the most.
Giving Tuesday is a tremendous opportunity not only to support the incredible work that World Vision does but also to double that impact. Any gift given to the World Vision Fund on Giving Tuesday, November 30, is matched up to $1 million — meeting the needs of today and beyond by empowering kids and families to create change that lasts. What can match the joy of giving?
If you’ve found yourself — like I have — wanting to make a difference, but not quite sure how, contributing to the World Vision Fund this Giving Tuesday is the perfect way to choose joy and double your positive impact.
What’s your favorite way to choose joy during the Christmas season? Whether giving the perfect gift to a loved one, empowering a child, or contributing to lasting change, you can find your best Christmas gifts for 2021 in the World Vision Gift Catalog!
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