Hostess Gifts for an Australian Christmas

By Vicki Richards, National Customer Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

A good Christmas hostess gift is shelf stable and needs nothing from the host on the day: no opening, no serving, no fridge space. Olive oil, a tin of shortbread, a jar of relish for the leftovers, a boxed set of salts. Spend $20 to $50, or around $80 if it is a hamper.

Most hostess gift lists are written for a northern winter, where the host is not also running lunch for fourteen people in 34 degree heat. In an Australian December the rule is simpler: if a gift has to be opened, arranged, chilled or served while the host is carving, it is another job.

The test, before you buy anything

Three questions. Does it need the fridge? By Christmas Eve that fridge is full and the host has worked out to the centimetre where the trifle goes. Does it need a vase, a plate or a knife? Flowers are the classic offender, arriving at the moment nobody has a spare hand. And is it competing with food they have spent two days on?

Anything that answers no three times works, and it usually goes in the cupboard and gets used in January. Most of our gift packs shelf passes, and so do the smaller Christmas hampers.

Six that pass

• A bottle of oil rather than a bottle of wine. Wine gets opened on the spot, or it does not and everyone notices. Olive oil carries none of that. Kangaroo Island Olives extra virgin olive oil is $19.25 for 250ml and $29.95 for 500ml, and the rest of the olive oil and vinegars shelf runs from $7.95 caramelised balsamics up to a $99.95 oil and vinegar gift set.
• The other half of the cheese board. The Just Add Cheese Hamper is $79.95 and contains no cheese, which is the point. Valley Produce Co mini artisan crackers with sea salt, the original Crackerthins, and the savoury and sweet things that sit beside a wedge. Nothing in it needs the fridge, and none of it competes with the platter already made. Our guide to which cracker goes with which cheese is the companion read.
• Salt they would not buy for themselves. The eat.art Salt Journey gift set is $39.95 for 365g of finishing salts in the eat.art tube format. Confident cooks are the hardest people to buy for because they own everything, and almost none of them upgrade their salt.
• A jar for the 27th. The King's Gunners tomato and red pepper relish from The Regimental Condiment Company is $12.95 for 270g. Whoever hosted will be eating cold cuts for three days, and relish is what makes the second and third rounds worth turning up for.
• A tin, not a packet. The Valley Produce Co Bottlebrush shortbread tin holds 180g for $19.95. Biscuits in a tin come out when someone drops in unannounced during that flat week between Christmas and New Year, and the tin stays in the kitchen long after the shortbread has gone.
• Bon bons, but a week early. The Mistletoe & Merry Metallics Gold Joy crackers are $49.95. Handing crackers over at the door is too late, because the table was set that morning. Send them in the first week of December and the host can build the table around them.

What to spend, and when to hand it over

For an invitation to lunch, $20 to $50 is the honest band and the top of it is plenty. Going bigger changes the temperature of the thing: a $150 gift at a family lunch reads as an apology for something. The exception is staying the night, or one household feeding a dozen people all day. Then a box does the job better than an object, and around $80 buys a complete one.

Yes, you still give it at Christmas lunch, and you give it at the door. Say it is for later, and mean it. A host obliged to open the gift, admire it and find a spot for it has been handed a task in the busiest hour of their year. Put a name on the card so it is not lost among the parcels.

Order earlier than feels necessary. Everything we send is packed by hand in Corio, on the northern edge of Geelong, with a gift card written out at no extra cost, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day. After that the parcel is on Australia Post's timetable, so December is governed by the calendar rather than the postcode: Australia Post confirms its Christmas dates in October, and mid-December is the practical limit in a busy year. Shipping is free Australia-wide over $100, which two of these gifts together will usually reach.

Buying for several hosts at once is easiest from the gift packs shelf, where most of the range sits between $39.95 and $99.95, already boxed to hand over. For the household hosting the whole thing, our shortlist of the best Christmas hampers in Australia sets the bigger boxes side by side.