Wondering what to put in a Christmas hamper? There really isn’t one perfect formula.
A great Christmas hamper could be overflowing with chocolate and sweet treats, built around a bottle of bubbles, packed with savoury platter food, or contain a little bit of everything. What matters is choosing products that work together, suit the people you’re buying for and feel generous within the budget you’re comfortable with.
After more than 40 years of gifting in New Zealand, we’ve seen Christmas hampers in just about every shape and size. Here’s what we’ve learnt about putting together one people will genuinely enjoy.
A good Christmas hamper should contain products your recipient will actually enjoy. For most people, a mixture of quality sweet and savoury treats is a great starting point. Add a favourite drink if you know what they like, cater for any dietary requirements you know about, and don’t worry about reaching a particular number of products.
Most importantly, send it with thought and love. That’s what makes a great Christmas gift.
Not at all. Presentation can make an everyday gourmet gift feel wonderfully Christmassy.
You don’t need Christmas-tree-shaped biscuits, candy canes and products covered in Santa Claus to create a festive hamper.
In fact, we’d rather fill a gift with delicious products people genuinely want to eat.
At About Giving, presentation is a big part of how we create that Christmas feeling. Our festive hampers are presented in beautiful velvet drawstring Santa sacks, turning a selection of gourmet food and drinks into something that immediately feels special enough to put under the tree.
That means the contents can concentrate on being delicious.
ABOUT GIVING TIP
Don’t choose a product simply because the packaging says Christmas. Start with products you’d be delighted to receive yourself, then let beautiful festive presentation bring the Christmas magic.
Chocolate, biscuits, nuts, crackers, chutneys, rocky road and other gourmet treats all work beautifully.
But rather than working from a Christmas hamper checklist, think about how the products will be enjoyed.
If you’re including crackers, give them something delicious to go with. If you’re creating something for sharing over Christmas, think platter foods, snacks and treats that can be opened when family and friends arrive.
Chocolate and sweet treats are always popular, but savoury products give the gift variety.
Every item should feel like it has a reason to be there.
It can be either — or a combination of both.
We generally love balance in a hamper, but Christmas is also a perfectly good excuse to lean right into indulgence.
Some of our Christmas hampers are deliberately a bit of a sugar rush, packed with chocolates, cookies and other sweet treats.
Others combine sweet and savoury products so there’s something to nibble on throughout the festive season.
Neither is better.
If you know someone has an enormous sweet tooth, embrace it. If you’re buying for a household or don’t know the recipient’s tastes particularly well, a broader sweet-and-savoury selection is usually the safer choice.
If you know they drink and know what they enjoy, absolutely. If you don’t know, we’d leave it out.
Wine, Champagne, beer and spirits are popular Christmas gifts and can create a natural centrepiece for a hamper.
But don’t include alcohol simply because it’s Christmas.
If you’re buying for someone you don’t know particularly well — perhaps a client, colleague or extended family member — an alcohol-free hamper filled with quality food is a safer option.
It certainly doesn’t have to feel like the lesser choice.
About Giving’s Christmas range includes both alcoholic and alcohol-free gifts, and our wider range includes plenty of alcohol-free hampers at different price points.
Think summer, sharing and easy entertaining.
One of the funny things about Christmas gifting is how much traditional Christmas imagery comes from the Northern Hemisphere.
Meanwhile, we’re over here in New Zealand having Christmas in the middle of summer.
That changes how we think about some gifts.
A Kiwi Christmas hamper can be built around things people can put out on the table, add to a platter or enjoy while sitting outside with family and friends.
Crackers, savoury snacks, nuts, chutneys, chocolate and easy sharing food all work well. If you know the recipients drink, you could add wine, bubbles or beer.
Our Kiwi Christmas hamper was created around exactly that idea: an alcohol-free selection of platter essentials designed for a Kiwi-style Christmas Day.
Christmas doesn’t have to taste like winter.
Include a little something for everyone.
When you’re sending one gift to an entire household, don’t make everything adult-focused.
For the kids, we might include fun treats such as Jet Planes, Smarties or chocolate fish.
For Mum and Dad, add gourmet platter food and perhaps a drink if you know what they enjoy.
Then include a few things everybody can share.
It doesn’t need to be perfectly divided into two products for Mum, two for Dad and two for each child. You’re creating one generous family gift.
Just make sure nobody looks at the hamper and thinks, Hang on, where’s my bit?
A gourmet selection of sweet and savoury food is hard to go wrong with.
For two adults, think about things they can open and enjoy together over the Christmas break.
Chocolate, crackers, savoury nibbles, nuts, biscuits and other gourmet treats create plenty of variety.
If you know they enjoy wine or bubbles, adding a bottle can turn it into an easy Christmas-evening or summer-entertaining gift.
Our Fizz The Season hamper is a good example of this approach, combining a choice of wine with chocolates and cookies.
Keep it broad and keep it alcohol-free.
This is our general rule when someone asks what to buy a person they don’t know particularly well, and Christmas doesn’t change it.
Choose a hamper containing a mixture of sweet and savoury food so you’re not relying too heavily on one preference.
Don’t try to guess their favourite wine.
Don’t assume they drink.
And don’t feel like you need to make the gift incredibly personal when you don’t have the information to do so.
A beautifully presented selection of gourmet food accompanied by a genuine Christmas message can be plenty thoughtful.
If you know about a dietary requirement, cater for it. Nobody needs to miss out at Christmas.
There are plenty of delicious gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan products available now, so dietary requirements don’t need to result in a sad little consolation hamper.
About Giving’s range includes dedicated gluten-free and vegan gifts, and our Create Your Own selection makes it possible to choose individual products suited to different dietary needs.
If you don’t know of any dietary requirements, you can’t be expected to predict them.
Use the information you have.
There’s no magic number.
This is something people can overthink.
A Christmas hamper doesn’t suddenly become a proper gift when product number seven goes into the box.
We’ve created smaller gifts containing just a few carefully selected products and huge hampers packed with treats.
Both can be wonderful.
Instead of counting items, think about whether the gift feels complete and whether you’re happy with what you’re giving.
Spend what you can afford and what feels right for the occasion.
There’s no correct Christmas hamper budget.
You might be sending a small thank-you to someone who helped you during the year. You might be buying for your parents. You might be pooling money with siblings for a larger family gift. Or you might be thanking an important client.
Those situations are completely different.
Set a budget you’re comfortable with and choose the best gift you can within it.
The thought isn’t measured by the dollar value.
Absolutely — and it’s particularly useful when you already know what your recipient loves.
If you know they’re mad about chocolate, build around that.
If they’re much more savoury than sweet, choose accordingly.
If you know their favourite wine, add it.
About Giving’s Create Your Own service lets you choose your packaging and then select products from our sweet, savoury, beverages, toys & baby, and home & beauty ranges. You choose the products and we’ll work out how best to present everything.
You can also start with a ready-made hamper and add extra products from Create Your Own. We’ll package everything together.
If you don’t know what they’d like, there’s nothing wrong with letting us do the choosing and starting with a ready-made Christmas hamper instead.
It should — provided the hamper has been designed with delivery in mind.
Everything we stock for our hampers is non-perishable and chosen to cope with travelling around New Zealand.
We know courier delays happen, particularly during the Christmas rush, so we’re not sending products that suddenly become unsafe if a parcel spends longer than expected in transit.
The biggest summer issue we’ve seen?
Chocolate melting.
New Zealand summer temperatures and a courier van aren’t always chocolate’s best friends.
We pack our gifts appropriately for travel, but once a parcel leaves us, we can’t control the weather or every environment it passes through.
It’s another reason experience matters when creating gifts that need to travel.
ABOUT GIVING TIP
If you’re making your own hamper at home and posting it elsewhere in NZ, think beyond what looks good in the box. Ask yourself what will still be happy after a couple of summer days travelling in a courier network.
Earlier is safer. Mid-December is a great target.
This is probably the biggest Christmas mistake we see:
People leave it too late.
December puts enormous pressure on courier networks. The sheer volume of parcels moving around New Zealand means delays happen, even when everybody is doing their best.
We dispatch gifts right through the Christmas rush, including Christmas Eve for those truly committed last-minute shoppers.
But the later you leave it, the less control anybody has over when it arrives.
If you’ve missed the ideal window, we’d still argue that a thoughtful Christmas gift arriving a little late is better than abandoning the idea completely.
But if having it there before Christmas matters, don’t leave ordering until the last minute.
Our normal delivery guidance is 1–2 working days for North Island addresses and 2–4 working days for South Island and rural delivery, with peak-season South Island rates applying from 18–29 December. Christmas volumes can still cause delays, so these shouldn’t be treated as guaranteed Christmas delivery times.
We’ll cover Christmas ordering dates and courier realities in much more detail in our dedicated Christmas Delivery Guide.
If you gave us around $100 and asked us to choose?
We’d happily send Fizz The Season.
It’s simple, celebratory and has the things people actually want to enjoy over Christmas: a choice of wine, chocolates and cookies.
But that’s our choice.
Someone else might prefer an entirely alcohol-free platter hamper. Someone with a legendary sweet tooth might be delighted by a sack full of chocolate. A family might appreciate a generous sharing selection with treats for the kids.
That’s the point.
There isn’t one perfect Christmas hamper.
After decades of putting together gifts, our golden rule for a great Christmas hamper is very simple:
Send it with thought and love.
Choose products people will enjoy.
Think about who you’re buying for.
Don’t obsess over how many items you’ve included or whether everything looks sufficiently “Christmassy”.
And please don’t wait until the courier driver is practically wearing a Santa hat before you place your order.
Beautiful festive presentation can take care of the Christmas feeling.
What’s inside should take care of the enjoying-it part.
Whether you want something sweet and indulgent, a balanced gourmet selection, a family sharing gift, a bottle of bubbles with treats or something completely alcohol-free, choose the Christmas gift that feels right for the people you’re buying for.
You can browse About Giving’s Christmas Gift Boxes & Hampers or use Create Your Own to build something yourself.
We’ll take care of making it look gorgeous — velvet Santa sack and all.
© 2026 About Giving All Rights Reserved l Web Design by Virtual Innovation
How the Video Message Works
Supported formats: MP4, MOV, AVI, M4V, WMV & MPEG. Maximum 25 MB.
