The festive season is upon us, and with seasonal fun also comes seasonal temperatures – all the more reason to hole up somewhere cozy and warm, wrapped in a favourite blanket and plugged into all the pop culture content you missed out on during all those bike rides and beach days and autumn walks earlier in the year.
Here, then, are some of our favourite picks for a geeky, pop culture-friendly, 2025 Holidays.
PlayStation Swag and Sleek New Controllers
Sony’s ripe-for-gift-giving latest releases are a nostalgic trip down gaming memory lane. From PlayStation-branded baseball jerseys (replete with pinstripes) to slick PS-character backpack clips (anything better than those godforsaken labubu things), to an ice-cold brand-new DualSense controller, the “Icon Blue”, there’s something for every Crash Bandicoot-, Nathan Drake-loving nerd on your gift list.
Mubi Subscription
The entertainment industry may be on the verge of imploding into a black hole of wrong-headed (and probably illegal) monopolization, but there are still pockets of great content available to be found, if you know where to look. Case in point is Mubi, the film (and, increasingly, television) streaming service which hosts a rotating library of top-tier arthouse, independent, and foreign productions, ranging from (as of the December 2025 rotation) David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) to Joachim Trier’s (he of Sentimental Education hype) The Worst Person in the World (2021), to Andreas Fontana’s phenomenal, and little-screen, Argentine junta thriller Azor (2021). Also, Twin Peaks is on here, so there’s that.
Candlelight Concerts Gift Card
For the more romantically minded gift-giver, there’s Toronto’s seemingly endless cycle of Candlelight Concerts, featuring a local string quartet performing arrangements of everything from Fleetwood Mac covers to Studio Ghibli tributes. Is it cheesy? Sure. Are some artists better-suited to the format? Of course. Is it still a lovely evening at the theatre, with talented musicians and a licensed bar? That’s true too.
Once Upon a Katamari (Switch, PS5, Xbox X, Windows)
It’s not, strictly speaking, our favourite game of 2025, but it’s definitely among the most party/holiday/family-friendly. The first wholly new Katamari game in over a decade, this latest entry (made without the involvement of creator Keita Takahashi, who’s been busy with his own oddball things this year) beautifully iterates on the classic “roll-stuff-up-and-see-what-sticks” gameplay of its predecessors, only this time across multiple themed eras, like a Wild West stage with hundreds of tumbleweeds to collect, or a Jurassic-themed level with a delightful menagerie of dinosaurs to attach to your ever-growing sphere-of-all-cosmos.
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For more gift-giving ideas, check out our favourite Canadian gifts/experiences from last year.
