Top 5 gifts for students to get for others

Image courtesy of Wix

It is that time of the year when everyone is frantically trying to find last minute Christmas gifts to give to your relatives and friends. Unfortunately, you are a student and it is the end of a long term, so your student loan ran out in the middle of a Vensday in mid-November. Therefore, you don’t really have any money to fulfil the social obligation of gift giving for the birthday of someone you have never even met and was alive around two thousand years ago. Never fear your friendly neighbourhood Satire editor is here and I have got you covered. Here are a few ideas for gifts that you could give at a limited cost.

1. The Communist Manifesto- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

You may not agree with the politics of these two and you can object to the actions of the Soviet Union on your own time if you so choose. However, I think this one might be the perfect gift to give as many people as you can. The first aspect of it that is useful for a student is its cost. Amazon will sell you a paperback copy of The Communist Manifesto for £1.80, meaning it will take up a minimal amount of your overdraft that you are dangerously close to the limit of. Also, this could solve the problem of having to buy gifts for you relatives in the future. If Marx and Engels convinced the entirety of Eastern Europe of the benefits of Communism, then I think your relatives may well also be susceptible to their political thesis. If they do end up buying into the contents of this book, then they too will believe that property is theft and next thing you know you won’t have to buy presents any more. The only downside I can see is that it might work too well, and you may end up working in a factory desperately trying to keep up with the five-year plans.

2. Poundland chocolate

Chocolate is popular Christmas gift and the most cost-effective way of treating your loved ones to a tasty desert is either to find what supermarkets have on sale or to go to your local Poundland and wreak havoc on their cut-price confectionary. If memory serves then I would personally opt for the box of Maltesers that is not seems unnecessarily stringent and Maltesers are generally a crowd pleaser if you don’t know the intended recipient’s preference, but you can always choose from their multitude of options. These kind of boxes of chocolate are always good as there is social pressure for people to share these kinds of things if they are being eaten in a group setting, like Christmas with your family. Therefore, you may well be granted the chance to recoup some of your outlay by eating one or two Maltesers when they are being offered out.

3. Anything from the centre aisle at Aldi or Lidl

Any of you who have crossed the threshold of an Aldi or Lidl will be very familiar with the slightly bizarre properties of their fabled central aisle. For those of you who haven’t been there, put down your pride and head on over and you probably wouldn’t be in this financial mess in the first place, but it also contains all the tools for survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I can’t tell you what to buy from the central aisle, because you genuinely don’t know what is going to be there. However, I can promise you that whoever you are buying for, there will be something for them there, you just need to find it.

4. Clothes from TK Maxx

TK Maxx has a lot of similarities with Aldi and Lidl’s central aisle as you have absolutely no idea what will be there, but you are safe in the knowledge that there will be something to fulfil their needs. It is eminently possible that you will find yourself getting lost in the labyrinth of rails with a lot of things that nobody wants and one or two things that you will. The beauty of TK Maxx is that the name brands of the clothes you buy people will inspire confidence that you splashed the cash, but you will be smug in the knowledge that it was a fraction of the cost that they think, earning you valuable gift giving points that will make other people feel I adequate. And as we all know, the spirit of Christmas is winning the gift exchange.

5. Bulk-buy toiletries

If you are in need of things like shower gel or shampoo for next term then a good idea could be to bulk buy these products from a place like Costco that sells them in large quantity, then you can take what you need and give the others as gifts for other people. Everyone knows that Christmas isn’t complete without socks and a Lynx Africa gift set and this is a great way to be set for the new term and help others to be clean in the new year.

Views expressed in InQuire's satire articles are those only of the writer and InQuire does not endorse any of these opinions, this section is dedicated to entertainment purposes only. We use fictitious characters in our stories, except in regards to public figures being satirised directly.