Screen-Free Holiday Activities Are Winning, and Handmade Gifts Are Why

Screen-free holiday activities sound like a parenting resolution, the kind announced in November and abandoned by the second week of December. This year the numbers behind them look different. Eight in 10 parents are seeking screen-free, hands-on holiday activities, according to the 2026 Michaels State of the Holiday Season Report, conducted by Morning Consult among 2,502 U.S. adults. And nearly 8 in 10 people who celebrate say a handmade gift worth far less means as much as, or more than, an expensive store-bought one.

That is not a niche craft-fair sentiment. It is a majority describing the season they actually want.

Screen-free holiday activities start with tired parents

Parents report the sharpest screen fatigue. More than half say they are worn out by their own time on screens, and half plan more screen-free activities than last year, the report found. Gen Z is close behind: nearly three-quarters want hands-on activities at home, and large shares of Gen Z and Millennials plan to set screen-free rules or unplug informally at some point in the season.

Retail coverage of the same survey underlines the wider mood. Nearly two-thirds want a less commercial holiday season, and 54 percent say their household already has more stuff than it needs, Chain Store Age reported. Six in 10 say they are likely to give a handmade or DIY gift, and sentiment, not price, is what most say matters in choosing one.

Pause there. A craft retailer commissioned this research, so a healthy scepticism about its framing is fair. Michaels sells the supplies for exactly the season it describes. Still, the sample is large, Morning Consult ran the fieldwork from 8 to 11 October 2026 with a margin of error of plus or minus two points, and the wholesale data from a separate platform points the same way. Self-interest can promote a trend; it rarely invents survey numbers wholesale.

The shops are stocking for hands, not screens

Faire, a wholesale platform for independent retailers, reports order patterns that match the surveys. Orders for crafts and hobbies rose 58 percent, games rose 55 percent and puzzles rose 40 percent, according to Faire’s holiday trend report. Embroidery, needlepoint, knitting, crochet and scrapbooking each grew by roughly 80 percent or more. Playing cards, board games and party games climbed with them.

The social detail is the telling one. Events pairing drinks with needlework rose sharply in the U.S., searches for “craft night” more than doubled on a major craft retailer’s site, and drop-in mahjong nights are drawing younger players, the Faire report notes. People are not buying solitary hobbies to endure December. They are buying reasons to sit at the same table.

Décor is following the same pull toward the handmade and the nostalgic. Faire calls the fastest-growing style “grannycore” — ceramic trees, tartan, glass ornaments, knits and crochet — with some of those categories more than doubling. It reads less like irony than like homesickness for rooms that looked lived in.

The early start is part of the same story

The Michaels report found six in 10 celebrators expect December to be stressful, with overspending and finding the right gift as the top worries, the survey shows. So people start sooner. More than a third begin buying before November; nearly three in 10 begin crafting before November. Among early starters, about half say they do it to spread spending across paychecks.

Time with family and friends, not receiving gifts, ranked as the top source of holiday joy in the survey — 48 percent against 18 percent — which helps explain why activities are beating objects this year.

A handmade gift fits that maths and that mood at once. It costs less, it cannot sell out in a flash sale, and the making of it doubles as the hands-on holiday activities at home that families say they want more of. One survey answer reinforces the other.

Analysis: Treat the headline figures with care — wanting a quieter season and living one are different things, and December has a long record of defeating November intentions. But purchasing data is harder to wish away. Retailers do not double orders of crochet kits and playing cards on vibes. Something in the season has shifted from acquiring the celebration to making it, slowly, at a table, with other people in the room and the phones somewhere else.

Photo: Bill Branson, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Sources

1. https://www.wcia.com/business/press-releases/cision/20261021DA77400/michaels-state-of-the-holiday-season-report-consumers-want-less-screen-time-and-more-meaning/
2. https://chainstoreage.com/survey-consumers-want-less-commercial-holiday-season-diy-gifts-play-role
3. https://www.giftsanddec.com/trending-gifts/product-trends/faire-report-nostalgia-and-hands-on-gifts-drive-younger-shoppers-holiday-buys/