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Published: 5/1/2025
A Guide to Shopping at the Christmas Markets for Gifts and Souvenirs
If you’re heading to Europe this December to visit the Christmas markets, you’re probably planning to do some shopping.
Sure, sampling festive food and drink, collecting gluhwein mugs, visiting Santa and Mrs. Claus, and going on carnival rides are favorite Christmas market activities. But picking up Christmas gifts for your friends and family, as well as some souvenirs for yourself remains the top reason to visit these charming holiday events.
You’ll find Christmas markets in seemingly every western European town and city in the weeks leading up to December 25. They’re especially popular in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Austria. The general consensus that Germany does Christmas markets best is hardly a surprise considering that Germany basically invented modern Christmas.
While each market has its own character and feel, all of these events feature small booths hawking food, drink, and small gifts. Because selection can vary so much from market to market, I find many bloggers hesitate to provide lists of what to buy at the Christmas markets.
However, after taking a week-long trip to the best Christmas markets in France, Germany, and Switzerland in December 2024, I can tell you that there are a lot of commonalities in the items sold at any given European Christmas market. I’m confident that you’ll find the items I list below at most, if not all, of the markets you visit.
In this guide to Christmas market shopping, I’m also including my personal favorite Christmas gifts, my best tips for successful shopping, and even some tricks for how to safely get your treasures home.
Let’s make your Christmas market adventure the trip of a lifetime complete with timeless souvenirs you’ll treasure until the end of your days!
My Personal Favorite Christmas Market Gift Ideas
I sometimes joke that I run my own personal import business because there’s nothing I like better than bringing home local wines, spirits, and other gifts for folks to sample from my travels.
Christmas market shopping is an especially fun challenge because you get to hunt for perfect presents while remaining cognizant of how much room you have in your suitcase! Here are my very favorite items to stock up on at the European Christmas markets for holiday gift giving.
- Teas
- Essential oils
- Paper star luminaries
- Lip balms
- Ornaments
- Local bakery specialties
20 Best Things To Buy At Christmas Markets in Europe
Here’s a list of the most common gift items you’ll find available at the Christmas markets in western Europe.
1) Cold weather accessories
Winter weather is at the front of everyone’s minds in the Christmas markets, even when the actual weather is often quite mild. You’ll probably find at least one stall devoted to hats, mittens, gloves, scarfs, muffs, and other cold weather accessories at the markets you visit. If you wanted to, you could easily kit out your entire Christmas list with new hats and mitts!
Personally, I always gravitate towards scarfs. Timeless (okay, maybe not the infamous blanket scarves of the early 2010s), easy to pack, and thoughtful, they make fantastic gifts, especially if you can score them in a favorite color and made with local fibers. Case in point, on this trip, I wore a wool scarf that a friend got me when she went to Ireland in 2006!
2) Tea and spices
I have so many tea lovers in my life and am a bit of a tea connoisseur myself, so I definitely geeked out at the large tea and spice booth in Basel. The lady running the stand quietly gave me a small basket to hold all my selections after watching me juggle an armload of loose leaf tea packages.
It’s a bit of challenge to figure out the ingredients in German, but it’s nothing you can’t tackle with the help of Google Translate and your nose. (They usually have small sample of the tea blends out in containers so you can see and smell it.) My parents loved the lebkuchen flavored tea I selected and I’m still working my way through a delicious, cinnamon fruit tea.
While I mostly got small plastic wrapped packets of tea blends because they’re easy to squirrel away in suitcases, they often have teas in more collectible wooden boxes as well. The tea stands usually also sell large packets of spices as well; think cinnamon, turmeric, etc. While I wasn’t tempted, it felt slightly medieval to have the option to stock up on teas and spices at an open air European market.
3) Gluhwein spices
I did bring one very special packet of spices home from the Christmas markets though: gluhwein spices! While you could certainly make your own gluhwein spices at home, it was fun to bring the Christmas market tradition of mulled wine back to my holiday celebrations with this blend of cinnamon, cloves, anise, and citrus peels.
Many of the booths where you purchase gluhwein also sell the pre-mixed spices in all different sizes. Since about every sixth Christmas market booth sells gluhwein, this is a very easy to source Christmas market souvenir. If you don’t enjoy alcohol, you can also use this make some kickass hot apple cider or kinderpunsch!
4) Essential oils
Remember the early 2010s when every other millennial was in an essential oil pyramid scheme and we were using them to do everything from sanitize our home to cure ear infections? We might have become a little more rational about our essential oil use since then, but essential oils are still a hot commodity at the European Christmas markets.
Honestly, I was shocked by how many essential oil booths we saw. You’ll find all the favorite oils like lavender, peppermint, and eucalyptus, as well as plenty of special holiday blends. Most essential oil booths also offer a variety of fun diffusers. The little fairy house diffusers we spied in Freiburg, Germany were my personal favorites!
They’re a fun purchase because they take up essentially (haha) no room in your luggage and last for ages. They make great personal souvenirs since scent is the sense most closely linked with memory. Every time I walk past my diffuser and get a whiff of the apple/cinnamon blend I picked up in Basel, I’m instantly transported back.
5) Christmas Tree Ornaments
As you might expect, Christmas tree ornaments and other holiday décor like Christmas villages are everywhere in the markets. With so many decorations to choose from, it pays to be a little choosey. You don’t want to end up with a bunch of made in China ornaments that you could have bought at the local strip mall.
Personally, I try to only buy ornaments from booths where you actually see the vendor making the ornaments by hand or can otherwise confirm that they’re made by a local artist. I fell in love with the work of Les Sapins Bleus, an artist group from France’s Alsace region. I’m so glad I circled back to their booth in Colmar to pick up a couple of their beautiful artwork ornaments. They even came with an informational brochure that explained the stories of each ornament.
Another tip is to try to select flat ornaments to increase your success rate transporting them home.
6) Candle luminaries
You’ll find at least one booth selling some sort of candle luminary. My favorites are the ones that use the heat of a tea light to rotate a tiny metal windmill that decorations like snowflakes, stars, or angels dangle from. Sometimes the tea light holder has a scene that matches the hanging decorations. They’re operate in a same way as the large wooden Christmas pyramids that you’ll often see massive replicas of in the markets.
Other luminaries have various wintery or holiday scenes stamped around the sides of the candle holders. They usually come in a little cardboard box so they’re relatively easy to take home. The windmill version in particular pack down quite flat.
7) Paper star lanterns
It’s so striking to spot the paper star lantern stand in the midst of a busy Christmas market and trust me, there’s always a paper star lantern stand. While you can certainly source these fun Christmas decorations in the States, these are such a great Christmas market purchase because they pack flat and really usher Christmas market vibes into your home.
8) Kitchen wares
If you have someone in your life who likes to putter around the kitchen, you’ll be able to shower them with gifts from Christmas markets. A fairly common booth we spotted were locally handcrafted wooden kitchen wares like spoons, ladles, bottle openers, rolling pins, bowls, and cutting boards.
In Colmar, we found a stall that sold handmade cloth reusable bread bags for transporting your baguettes and boules home from the bakery. While most Americans wouldn’t have much use for these, they would be a great gift for any sourdough bakers you know looking for a sustainable way to store their loaves.
9) Candies
You’ll find all sorts of stalls selling various candies like homemade caramels, taffies, and chocolates. Our favorites from this trip were chocolate coated caramelized almonds which our host told us were a Swiss specialty.
Another fun candy to seek out in Switzerland and Germany are the schaumkass or schokokuss. These chocolate covered marshmallows come in so many different flavors and while they might not be quite what you’re expecting (they’re so fluffy!) they’re definitely worth trying.
10) Candles
At their heart, the Christmas markets are all about making light and levity in the darkest time of year, so you’ll have no problem stocking up on handmade beeswax candles.
11) Baked goods
Here’s the thing, as a person who lugged an entire pandoro cake around Milan and Switzerland for a week, I have a pretty high tolerance for faffing about with European baked goods. You cannot convince me that delicious local baked goods like stollen, lebkuchen, panettone, or lackerli are too cumbersome to bring home. They’ll be such a fun addition to your own holiday celebrations!
12) Lotions and balms
While personal care items can get a bad rap for being “default” gifts that don’t necessarily exude thoughtfulness, I think any lotions, balms, or other tinctures you purchase at the Christmas markets will be warmly received by the recipient.
These are high quality products, usually handmade with local ingredients like goat’s milk or herbs. The foreign language on the label is sure to charm also. Bonus, lip balms in particular take essential no space in your suitcase. The real trick is remembering which pocket you squirreled them away in!
13) Charcuterie
Sadly, you can’t transport all the Christmas market food stands home with you. However, you’ll probably find a stall selling packaged smoked and/or cured sausages to take home. Make sure what you buy is fully cooked and clearly labeled with its country of origin so you don’t have any headaches when you go through customs.
14) Cheese
While you’re sure to be eating plenty of cheese are the markets (seriously – you’ll want to plan to eat your own weight in raclette), you’ll also find cheesemongers who can hook you up with local cheeses to bring home. I bought a couple locally made cheeses at the Christmas market in Como City and they were so delicious.
Just like with charcuterie, you’ll want to make sure that they have the country of origin displayed somewhere on the label for when you clear customs. I always prefer to buy vacuum sealed cheese just because I think they’re the easiest to transport and contain odors. (I imagine it’s fairly hard to get smell of fresh gorgonzola out of suitcases.)
There are a lot of myths out there about what cheeses you can and can’t bring back to the United States, but you can basically bring any cheese back with you, regardless of how it’s wrapped, whether it’s hard, semi-hard, or soft as long as it’s for your personal consumption. The only cheeses that customs definitely doesn’t want to see are any cheeses with meat in them and cheeses that “pour like a liquid”, i.e. ricotta, cottage cheese, etc.
15) Leather goods
Fun fact: I once spent the better part of day tromping through central Rome trying to find the perfect leather purses for my friend to bring home to her mom and aunt. Don’t worry – we were eventually successful and of course, immediately treated ourselves to a celebratory gelato . . . when in Rome . . . .
Happily, you won’t have to work as hard as I did in Rome to find leather goods at the Christmas markets. There are always stalls selling purses, belts, and other leather goods. Wallets in particular make great gifts since they’re so small and let’s be honest, we all meant to replace our wallets years ago and just never got around to it.
16) Cards and prints
I actually have a bit a problem with buying art prints when I’m traveling. I love that they weigh next to nothing and are so easy to fit in the upper flap of suitcase. Unfortunately, after two + decades of traveling, you start to run out of wall space.
If you have more wall space than I do and are looking for unique artwork that will always make you think of your Christmas market travels, you will find so many booths selling prints, notecards, and other artwork.
17) Kids’ toys
If you have littles to shop for, the Christmas markets are a great place to pick up toys that have the potential to become family heirlooms. We saw many stands offering beautiful handmade wooden toys. We were especially enchanted by alphabet letters that used an animal who’s name starts with the same letter to shape the alphabet character.
18) Gin and wine
Want to bring home a little tipple? There’s no shortage of wine and liquors, especially gin, for sale at the markets. While I mostly associate gin with the United Kingdom, I’ve found gin everywhere in Europe from the Azores to Lugano, Switzerland. I don’t actually think that continental Europeans drink much gin, but vendors at European markets sure make a lot of it!
19) Oils
Whether you’re looking for high quality olive oil or infused oils, you’ll find plenty of options at the Christmas markets. These oils make a great gift for any foodies on your list. Or you could set it out as a dipping oil with a loaf of bread at your own holiday gatherings.
20) Jams and honey
You’ll also find a wide variety of jams, honey, relishes, and other jarred foods at the markets. While these do make fantastic gifts for just about anyone (hey, everyone has to eat!) they can get quite heavy in your suitcase, so you’ll want to be a little discriminating in what you purchase. If there are samples, definitely try before you buy to make sure you only lug the most delicious items back home.
My Best Tips for Shopping at Christmas Markets
- Do a lap first – Do a full lap through the market before making any purchases. This is the best way I know to avoid buyer remorse. We did almost all of our gift purchases in Basel since we had the luxury of coming and going to these markets several times. By the time we did our shopping several days into the trip, we knew exactly what we wanted to buy.
- Have both cash and card – I assumed the markets would be cash only, but I made the vast majority of my purchases with Apple Pay. All the markets in Switzerland and France are set up for card payments so I actually could have skipped going to the ATM first thing in Basel. However, the German markets seem much more likely to be cash only, so it’s always a good idea to have some euros in your pocket.
- Have a plan for getting it home – Sure you’re enchanted with it when you’re in the magical glow of the markets, but can you really get it home safely or without causing major headaches and worry?
- Decide if it’s unique enough to justify the room it will take up – Avoid buyer’s remorse by checking where the item you’re considering was manufactured. You don’t need to waste suitcase space on a half dozen luminaries that you can buy at Walmart. That said – if you love it and know it will always remind you of your trip, who cares where it was made!
- Be aware of custom regulations – Honestly, as long as you’re not trying to bring back produce or a potted plants, you shouldn’t have any problems getting your Christmas market purchases through customs. It’s unlikely you’ll exceed either spending or volume quantity in categories. Still, it pays to brush up on custom regulations before you travel to make sure all your purchases will pass through U.S. Customs with flying colors.
Tips and Tricks For Getting Your Christmas Market Souvenirs Home
Pack bubble wrap – If you think you might purchase a lot of delicate items, throw a wad of bubble wrap into your suitcase to help transport things home. Alternatively, just buy a newspaper at a newsstand for cheap packing material. This will be much cheaper than buying tissue paper in Europe even if you hit up a notoriously budget friendly shop like Flying Tiger Copenhagen.
Wine skins – You know I love my wine skins! If you’re thinking you’ll be buying any oils, wine, or other bottled items, these bubble wrap bottle holders are a much more elegant way to transport those bottles home than wrapping them in your dirty laundry. You don’t even need to seal them shut. Just fold the bottom flaps shut and you’ll be able to use them for years.
Bring a collapsible bag – If you follow my advice to travel with carry-on suitcase, but still want to shop a lot, toss an expandable bag, like a Foldie, into your suitcase. At the end of your trip, you can fill the Foldie with dirty clothes and other unimportant items so you can devote your suitcase to Christmas market finds.
Pack a folder – While I resist the millennial urge to print out all of my travel documents, I do always travel with a folder that has a copy of my passport in it. This ended up being the perfect way to transport my paper star lanterns to make sure their tips didn’t crushed or bent during transit.
Conclusion: How To Be a Successful Shopper at the Christmas Markets in Europe
Shopping at the European Christmas markets is such a treat! Now that you know what to expect to find, you can form a plan of attack that will help you find something for everyone on your list and stay on budget.
From Christmas decorations, seasonal food specialties, fancy food and drink, and useful, high-quality items like lotions, mittens, wallets, toys, or kitchen wares, it’s easy to fill your suitcase with meaningful and memorable gifts. You’re sure to find a couple souvenirs for yourself as well!
Just make sure you think ahead to how you’ll get everything home buy brushing up on customs regulations and throwing some packing materials like bubble wrap and wine skins in your suitcase. If you especially love shopping, you might also include a collapsible duffel bag so you can check in additional bag if necessary on your return trip.
Happy shopping and happy holidays!
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