Our columnist’s picks for the most Philly gifts you can give

Philadelphia is obviously a gift to the world, but what in the world do you give someone who is obviously in love with Philly?

If The Inquirer’s 2025 Very Philly Gift Guide helps you find something for everyone, this one’s just for the locals — and anyone who thinks a Sizzli snow globe is peak holiday magic. Consider this a love letter to Philly’s quirks: a collection of gifts that only true locals (and a few honorary ones) will fully appreciate.

As one of those people myself, I’ve compiled this list of some of my favorite recent Philly purchases and experiences, along with items I’m putting on my own wish list this year.

The selections here represent The Inquirer’s picks this holiday season. When you make a purchase through a link in this list, The Inquirer may be paid a commission.

It’s no secret that Al’Lee Floyd, who manages SEPTA’s store, has elevated the agency’s retail outlet into a must-stop shopping destination for Philly transit lovers.

This holiday season, Floyd is really killing knit with a particularly snazzy ugly holiday sweater featuring a front-and-back design of SEPTA vehicles, the Philly skyline, and snowflakes.

So while all you may want for Christmas is for our state legislatures to permanently fund SEPTA, you can at least get this ugly sweater — which seems far less likely to unravel than our government.

🛍️ SEPTA’s holiday sweater is $49.95 and available at shop.septa.org.

If you want to score points with the sports fan in your life who’s hyped that Philadelphia is getting its own WNBA team in 2030, this year’s slam-dunk gift is a “Philly is a women’s sports town — Est. 2030″ T-shirt.

This wardrobe staple is extremely versatile — you can wear it while traveling or to court — and it’s been spotted on celebrities like Parks and Recreation’s Aubrey Plaza, who wore it to a WNBA game this summer.

The tee is a collaboration between Go Hamm, a Philly-based shirt company dedicated to women’s sports, and Watch Party PHL, a group founded by Philadelphia firefighter Jen Leary.

🛍️ The T-shirt is available for $29 at go-hamm.square.site.

Called the “shirt of the year” by the Phillies’ social media account, the “Go Phils & Phillips” tee from Phillygoat is ridiculously random and a great gift for the Phils fan in your life who’s still salty at the actual team.

Emblazoned with the words “Go Phils” on the front and back, the T-shirt features an assortment of people, characters, and things named Phil and Phillip, or that have “fill” in their name. There’s Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, former St. Joe’s basketball coach Phil Martelli, Punxsutawney Phil, and a cavity filling.

Phillygoat also makes a “Go Birds!” shirt with images of Larry Bird, Tweety Bird, and a hand flipping the bird.

🛍️ The “Go Phils & Phillips” shirt is $34.99 and the “Go Birds” shirt is $32.99, available at phillygoat.com.

If you’re stuck on what to get the diehard Delaware County resident in your life, how about a holiday decoration that commemorates getting stuck in Delco?

The Route 420 “crash bridge” ornament, featuring a tractor-trailer stuck under a low-clearance bridge, nods to the Amtrak bridge on Route 420 in Prospect Park, where big-rig drivers keep getting stuck despite the warning signs.

The ornament is from Rock and Russ Creations, a company founded by lifelong Delconians, Stephen and Lisa Russell. The couple started designing locally themed ornaments in 2022, and they release a new one each year. Stay tuned to their website for this year’s very Delco decoration release.

🛍️ The Route 420 “crash bridge” ornament is available at select Delco gift shops and rockandruss.com for $25.

For your Shorti who’s always going on a Wawa run, consider shaking up gift-giving this year with a Wawa holiday snow globe.

Is there any reason this had to be made? Nope, but I’m snow glad it was. The globe features an old-school Wawa store and a base that reads “Wawa Wonderland.”

If you’ve ever been to a Wawa after 2 a.m., you know it is a land of wonders, indeed.

🛍️ This Sizzli and snowy gift is $19.99 and available at gear.wawa.com (sold out as of Nov. 25).

For those who dream of hanging in their living room with Jalen Hurts or Trea Turner, Hallmark can help make your holiday wishes come true.

No, you can’t buy your way into a Hallmark holiday movie with Hurts or Turner as your star-crossed lover, but you can buy official Hallmark ornaments of the Philly sports stars your friends will pine after, fir sure.

🛍️ The Hurts ornament is $28.99 and the Turner ornament is $29.99. They are available at hallmark.com and at local Hallmark Gold Crown stores.

The Wanamaker Christmas Light Show and Dickens Village will return this year thanks to a fundraising campaign by the Philadelphia Visitor Center and the building’s new owner, TF Cornerstone. And for the first time, you can secure the “best seat in the house” by making a donation in a loved one’s name (or in your own, Scrooge).

As part of the “Save the Light Show” fundraiser, there are several donation gifts, including an 8-by-10 “Behind the Lights” blueprint for those who donate $250 and a “best seat in the house” experience for four to view the show from the second-floor mezzanine when you donate $500 or more. (Note: There are no plans for actual seats. It will still be standing room only.)

Obviously that’s a sack full of money, but it’s for a great cause, and the show is still free to the public.

🛍️ To donate, visit savethelightshow.org.

I can’t believe it took me 18 years to go on the tower and building tours of our gorgeous City Hall, but after finally crossing it off my bucket list this year, I highly recommend the tours for the Philly-phile on your list.

Even though I’d walked in and around City Hall countless times, I saw so many details on the building tour I’d never noticed before, like City Hall’s cornerstone.

The tower tour, which is a separate ticketed experience, took me high up in City Hall and into a four-person elevator that dropped me off right below the statue of William Penn and onto a platform with an incredible 360-degree view of the city.

🛍️ Timed tickets for the tours are available at phlvisitorcenter.com/CityHall and range from $10 to $26 a person, depending on age and military status.

Times are tough right now, and just leaving your house can feel expensive, so I wanted to include a free experience that doesn’t feel cheap — the Universal Sphere at the Comcast Technology Center.

The Sphere, a state-licensed attraction in the building’s upper lobby, is a 34-by-39-foot futuristic orb you step inside of for an immersive theatrical experience. For most of the year, it features a seven-minute film called The Power of I, about the power of ideas, but during the holidays you can see the short film Shrek’s Festive Flight, which features a roller-coaster-esque adventure to the North Pole that begins with a flyover of Philadelphia.

Tickets are free, but timed reservations are recommended — that way, you don’t have to tell anyone it was free. Pair this with free visits to the nearby Comcast Center’s holiday show on its LED wall and the Wanamaker Christmas Light Show, and you’ve got a day that’s easy on the wallet but rich in memories.

🛍️ To make reservations for the Sphere, visit comcastcentercampus.com/universal-sphere/

Two of my favorite purchases this year were plushies of Gritty and the Phanatic that sit independently on my shoulders. When I wear them both at the same time, it’s the Philly version of having an angel in one ear and a devil in the other.

Called “shoulder buddies,” these plushies come with magnets in their bottoms and an additional flat magnet that goes inside of your shirt so the doll can attach to it. These stuffed mascots are so humerus nobody will give you the cold shoulder while you’re sporting them around town.

🛍️ The Gritty shoulder buddy is $24.99 and available at shop.outphitters.com. The Phanatic shoulder buddy, which I bought at Citizens Bank Park, is harder to come by. The Reading Fightin Phils had it available online for $25 at fightinphils.milbstore.com recently, but it was unclear how long supplies would last.

If there’s a wildcard on your list who’d like an itty-bitty Danny DeVito holding a teeny-tiny rum ham, look no further than Fisher-Price’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Little People collector’s set.

Released this year to mark the 20th anniversary of the show about five megalomaniacs who run a skeevy Philly dive bar, the set also features Charlie in full conspiracy-theory mode, Flipadelphia Dee, Fat Mac, and Dennis demonstrating his D.E.N.N.I.S. system of seduction.

🛍️ The Little People gang comes in a box made to resemble Paddy’s Pub and is available on Amazon for $29.95.

From the folks at the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia website and the University of Pennsylvania Press comes a hardcover book set, Greater Philadelphia: A New History for the Twenty-First Century, for the Philly history buff in your life.

The set features three books: The Greater Philadelphia Region, Greater Philadelphia and the Nation, and Greater Philadelphia and the World, which tell the true Philly stories behind everything from the topography and transit of the region to the Revolutionary War, the Odunde Festival, Gritty, and scrapple.

Timed to coincide with the nation’s 250th anniversary next year, these new encyclopedic books feature lovely images and loads of dense text about the city’s history and its place in the world.

🛍️ The books retail for $44.95 each or $125 for the three-volume set. They are available wherever books are sold and at pennpress.org.

When it comes to mainstay establishments in Philadelphia, few have more street cred or more stories than McGillin’s Olde Ale House, which predates LOVE Park, Ralph’s Italian Restaurant, and even City Hall.

Now the tales of Philly’s oldest continually-operating tavern, which opened in 1860, have been gathered into one book — Cheers to McGillin’s: Philly’s Oldest Tavern — by the bar’s longtime publicist, Irene Levy Baker.

The newly released book includes ghost stories, tales of love, sports celebrations remembrances, recipes, photos, and a foreword by former Gov. Ed Rendell.

🛍️ Cheers to McGillin’s: Philly’s Oldest Tavern is $29.95 and available at mcgillins.com, at McGillin’s Olde Ale House (1310 Drury St.), the McGillin’s Shoppe (123 S. Juniper St.), and wherever books are sold.