Since we launched the Strategist, Amy Sedaris has always been one of our North Stars in terms of someone who embodies the obsessiveness, sense of humor, and exquisite taste that we’re always striving for. This was clear in her “What I Can’t Live Without” from 2019 (it’s become Strategist canon at this point), which first introduced us to the pink paper towels her brother David used to bring her back from London and the chair socks she gets in Tokyo. Last holiday season, we even asked her to be our gift columnist.

Starting in early December, Sedaris started posting her own gift guides on her Instagram account — 20 gifts at a time, accompanied by simple captions, retailers tagged, completely brilliant, and slightly deranged. Yet as a Strategist editor, I felt like they were just slightly hard to actually shop from. So I asked if she would be up for letting us publish her guides on the Strategist with direct links to each item and her reasoning behind each gift. She graciously obliged. After over two hours’ worth of phone conversations last week (to the point of her voice getting hoarse!) and countless emails back and forth, I compiled her gift guide, below. A few things: This isn’t every single gift — it’s, as she put it, “the pick of the chick,” the stuff that most easily translates to a website. She’s also still rolling out the guides (she’s up to 13) and has more in her she wants to share with her followers. “I get all jazzed up around the holidays,” she told us. “It was nice to have a creative outlet for my yuletide energy.”

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