All we want for Christmas

What we have learned since the COVID-19 upended our lives is that for the most part we have everything we need. We can be cooped up at home for over a year, with nowhere to go, except the weekly grocery or bank or clinic for errand runs. We can be deprived of the company of our dearest friends or even relatives outside of our immediate families, except through get-togethers over Zoom or Google Meet or Messenger calls. Yet, we have survived it all. We learned to cook, we learned to grow gardens, we learned to fix faucets, unclog a sink drain, DIY a cabinet, even groom our dogs, we learned to pray, and we learned to love ourselves a little more—or hate what we have discovered to be abhorrent about us.

But it’s Christmas, the season of gift-giving, and the first since last year’s dull Christmas in quarantine. Here is a list of things we don’t need, but we might want after having given up on the life of excess that we used live before the pandemic made us realize how wasteful our life had been. Because as much as life is about needing, it is also about wanting. Desire is the fuel without which much of what is magical in the world might not have been possible.

You might say this is a list of extra things to give to the person who has it all.

All dressed at home on the Mason Wingback Chair

Anyone on your list would be happy to receive the Mason Wingback Chair, available at Philux in a variety of sustainably wood finishes, from European linden to mahogany, and in a range of easy-on-the-eye colors, from Ducco white and charcoal to tobacco and Ducco black. If we have yet to say goodbye to quarantines, it would be nice to have this chair in the corner to sit in when we are in the mood to get all dressed with nowhere to go. Philux.ph

Beyond gift-giving: the Jewelmer Noël pendant

Reflective of the magic of the holidays and evocative of holidays in the tropical sun, this collection of golden pendants, each a charming sculpture delicately fashioned by hand around the rare and precious South Sea pearl, is a gift of gold to treasure and bequeath. Plus it’s a gift that gives more and more. With every purchase of the exquisite Noël pendant until Dec. 31, a portion of the proceeds will go the non-profit MoveEd Foundation. Jewelmer.com

Feeling extra special on La Mer nights

If you can’t be there, reach out with the gift of Crème de La Mer. Nothing but your touch can make your recipient—man or woman—feel more special than this moisturizer with a heart of cell-renewing Miracle Broth drawn from sea kelp through a fermentation process. It’s a daily devotion, but best when one needs to feel extra special like after a long shower when the skin is rid of the grime of the day, and there is a desire to soothe sensitivities, to uplift the skin and the spirit, and to envelope oneself with a sense of pampering and protection. The scent, a bonus, is a whiff of comforting times, like those times one’s mother was ever-present. LaMer.com.ph

A taste of eternal summers

Every mouthful of Pastry Cart’s Crème Brûlée Cake, a magic concoction of Camille Ocampo, is a return to childhood summers in a mango orchard deep in the countryside or even in the city when mangoes were in season and they would provide a sweet finish to every meal with the whole family. But this takes the cake for leveling up in luxury, looking very much like the quintessential French dessert and feeling just so with its mouthfeel that is in equal parts velvety and crunchy. The crackled sugar layer that tops the light-as-air, soft-as-cloud chiffon underneath is sure to whet your appetite at first glance. @thepastrycart on IG

The ‘Everything That’s Crazy’ Christmas hamper

Resto PH communications director Spanky Hizon Enriquez has been asked to take part in online delicatessen and groceries delivery The Bow Tie Duck’s biggest fundraiser yet, the curation of a Christmas hamper worthy of a VIP wish list to benefit Kawa Pilipinas, a non-profit that aims to fight hunger one meal at a time through food drives within Metro Manila for the homeless, locally stranded individuals, urban poor, Persons Deprived of Liberty (PDLs), disaster victims, seniors and orphans, kids with special needs, even frontliners. What Spanky has curated for the project is a complicated gift hamper, replete with “everything that’s crazy,” such as Époisses de Bourgogne, a slab of Roaring Forties premium lamb tenderloin, Castaing whole goose foie gras truffled at three percent, a Satchmi or coffee olive oil cake by Casa Saporzi, and a bottle of Château des Tours Brouilly, Beaujolais. Bowtieduck.com