Holiday Gifts and Donations with Animals in Mind

Note: The store list has been updated.

Yesterday brought with it December, that month when so very many people spend so very much. I'm not a grand fan of our culture's consumerist tendencies, a sentiment I'm sure many of you share, but if you are in a moderate gift-giving spirit or looking to engage in some charitable holiday giving, I'm here to point you in some animal-friendly directions and, in perhaps one case, send you in a direction different from what you're accustomed to doing.

First, the plea: If you care about animals, please don't give gifts made from animals. Leather gloves, wool coats and sweaters, boxes of chocolates -- you can buy vegan versions of all these things, versions for which animals weren't required to suffer and die.

With that out of the way, let's talk about what gifts are animal-compassionate! You can respect animals, help animals, support vegan businesses, and spread compassion and the message of true peace for all just with how and on what you spend your money.

The Buying

For everything from clothes and accessories (including traditional gear and message gear) to books and cookbooks to food and treats in every conceivable category to products for pampering your body to goodies for your companion animals, you have several online vegan stores whose virtual aisles full of awesomeness you can explore with childlike glee, even if their physical location is far from you. Here are some of these great stores:

• Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe (including "Holiday Gift Ideas" section)
• Herbivore (home of my beloved Cow Hugger shirt)
• Pangea, The Vegan Store (including "Holiday Gift Ideas" and "Holiday Cooking & Baking" sections)
• Vegan Essentials (including "Holiday Gift Ideas" section)
• Food Fight! Vegan Grocery (home of the "What Kind of Asshole Eats a Lamb?" shirt we discussed here)
• EDIT: Vegan Etsy! How could I forget the uber-cool Vegan Etsy? In their words: "We are a team of vegans that have vegan shops on Etsy.com. Many of us give a percentage of our sales to animal charities and our focus is on supporting vegans & vegan education."

Do browse through all of them because each store has some items that the others don't. And animal-compassionate folks can still do the traditional in-store shopping if Internet shopping isn't their thing. You may not be able to find rare specialty vegan food items where you live, but you can still be conscious of not buying gifts and treats that required the exploitation and killing of animals or that include animal ingredients.

The Donating and Volunteering

To help animals this holiday season and beyond, people can also donate to, sponsor animals via, or commit to volunteering at farmed animal sanctuaries and no-kill organizations/shelters, and some sanctuaries also sell products featuring their logo or their resident animals.

But I'm going to make a recommendation here: don't direct your holiday giving to the largest, best-known nonprofits this year; instead support the small to medium-size setups that can't afford to run major fundraising campaigns but that need help just as much, if not more, especially in tough economic times.

All organizations fighting for animals and all sanctuaries caring for them need money, but I'm asking you, this year, to consider donating to the less visible groups, whose founders and volunteers may be barely scraping together enough money to pay the bills each month. Organizations with CEOs making six-figure salaries or with star power just aren't in as tight a spot.

Consider sanctuaries such as Maple Farm Sanctuary in Massachusetts, which is run by amazing people who completely changed their lives, who went from animal farmers to animal rescuers (see previous post on the sanctuary here). Explore the various sanctuaries and no-kill shelters, and try to donate your dollars where they're needed most -- Animal Place Sanctuary maintains a state-by-state directory of farmed animal sanctuaries, and Save Our Strays has a no-kill directory here, though I recommend checking out any organization that's listed for yourself before sending your donation.

And if you're looking to engage in some charitable giving for humans, please remember that truly compassionate giving does not involve exploitation of and cruelty to our fellow animals.

Finally, readers from outside the United States, if you have store and sanctuary recommendations for your part of the world (assuming you've even read this far, through all this U.S.-focused stuff), please send a note, and I'll feature them as well!

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Related from last year: Top Online Stores for Animal-Friendly Shopping

Pictured vegan ornaments available from Pangea