The holiday season is always a busy one, from final exams to shopping for last-minute Christmas gifts and traveling back home, finally away from a dorm room or living with roommates.
And for the 2025 festivities, Walmart has been busier than ever, and it is all thanks to TikTok. For many, the holiday season trend isn’t about getting a new cup from Starbucks or wearing ugly Christmas sweaters, but a Salvation Army Angel Tree haul.
Since early November, creators on TikTok have taken their closest Walmart by storm, making videos while selecting one or more names from an Angel Tree and spending hundreds of dollars on Christmas gifts for low-income children.
Unsurprisingly, the internet has replied to these videos with a wave of criticism. People in the comments argue that the whole trend is nothing more than an attempt to monetize a good deed, since these videos have quickly garnered a couple of hundred thousand views each. But while some of the motives behind the camera might deserve scrutiny, the fact is that most of the wishes on those lists are out of necessity, not greed.
Those coats, sweaters, gloves and hygiene products are now in the hands of children who desperately need them after a year of financial struggle. When the need is this great for a family who cannot catch a break, the result is what matters most, not the 15 minutes of fame for a small content creator’s single video.
The trend started after a content creator with the username itscookiedoughh posted a video getting presents for two Angel Tree kids, a boy and a girl. However, instead of buying the items on the list, she only got a couple of things, claiming the original wishes had been too expensive. After receiving some well-deserved criticism on her video, she doubled down and said the kids should be thankful for what they get, no matter what.
It is clear that she missed the whole point of the program. Started in 1979 by Majors Charles and Shirley White in Lynchburg, Virginia, the idea of Angel Tree was to help children in need by taking their Christmas gift lists and placing them on Christmas trees in shopping malls for others to fulfill them.
Walmart’s later partnership includes hosting the trees and adding an online registry. This expanded the program dramatically, making it so shoppers were able to help online.
In an article posted to the Salvation Army official website in 2020, both organizations would be participating in programs like Angel Tree and Red Kettles to round-up donations available both in store and online due to an economic decline of an ongoing health crisis that had “led to a new population of families and individuals facing unemployment and financial hardships that are expected to last through the holidays and well into the coming year.”
The backlash against TikTok’s Angel Tree trend is rooted in a valid concern; when it becomes a performance, the validity and integrity behind an act is questioned and cheapened. This good deed is being filmed and monetized on one of the most popular social media platforms today, gaining millions of views for creators like Serena Neel, who has created a whole mini-series, going above and beyond for all the children she has chosen.
But while the attention is on her as a creator and doesn’t feature the actual families in need, it introduces the act of giving to a new demographic. College students who come across the videos see all the good that it does for low-income families and children who are asking for basic needs that can’t be given to them by their own parents (or from help from the government).
Charity drives have limited exposure and marketing, and a quick scroll, which everyone does, can help more people turn a trip to Walmart into a meaningful shopping experience for others. The massive scale of the viral trend is just what is needed in these troubled financial times. If the videos motivate thousands of donors, who might even do it for the views, that is still thousands of children across the country being helped and thousands of gifts being delivered. The results from the 2024 campaign are enough to show the difference even without the trend.
For the child who receives the gift, the motivation behind it is irrelevant. Of course, this still means that someone who decides to participate should not do it out of obligation or choose an angel who might be out of their budget. Families who qualify for the program ask for what they feel like they need. They don’t care if the shoes were bought for a click; they care that they have new shoes. They don’t care that their new winter coat is trending on social media; they care that they will be warm this winter.
