When I was small there were practically no toys. Christmas in Moșteni, a village in Teleorman county in southern Romania, meant going round the houses singing carols and coming home with pretzels, nuts and candies. That was the whole haul.
I am not recommending this. But it did teach me something about presents that I have never managed to unlearn, which is that the thing which does everything by itself gets played with least.
The test
Does it still need the child in six weeks?
A toy that performs is finished on Boxing Day. The child watches it four times, the batteries go, and it lives under the sofa until spring. A thing that only works when a child brings something to it, a voice, a decision, an argument with a brother, gets picked up again in February.
Things that pass
A deck of cards. The best value object in any house. Needs a second person, fits in a pocket, plays a hundred games. I made a proper list of which games at which age.
Anything they are allowed to ruin. Crayons, paint, chalk, paper. Adults are strangely bad at providing the one present a year that is meant to be destroyed.
A torch. I am serious. A cheap torch given to a six-year-old produces about four months of activity that no manufacturer planned and no adult supervises.
A proper ball. Not a light novelty one. A ball with weight, which behaves the way a ball is meant to.
Something with a rule in it. A board game, a card game, anything with a turn to wait for. Waiting is a skill and it is learned by waiting, not by being told to be patient.
A book somebody has to read out loud. The only present that is also an hour of somebody's attention, which is the actual gift.
Things that fail
The big loud plastic thing. You know the one. It is in every advert, it has a speaker in it, and the delight lasts roughly ninety seconds, which is the length of the advert, and that is not a coincidence.
Anything that needs a subscription. If it stops working when a card expires, it is not a present, it is a lease.
Anything promising to teach a four-year-old to code. Let them be four. The robot will wait.
Where mine sits
The Sing Me a Fable set is a storybook and a real fifty-four card deck, plus songs, karaoke, games and a colouring book you print yourself. Nothing in the box takes a battery. Nothing renews. $49.95 during the launch.
Its honest weakness against this list: it is not cheap, and a deck of cards from any shop plus a torch would cost you eight dollars and pass the same test.
And the free one
If you want something for nothing this week, the twenty-six colouring posters cost nothing but paper. Print three, hand over the crayons, and watch what comes back. That will tell you more about what to buy in December than any guide will.