Most trends have meaningless and fun personalities, but this year content creators were documenting themselves giving back during holiday season. Angel tree has always been in churches and non profit organizations, but this year Walmart has taken it on. Influencers have been documenting themselves spending hundreds of dollars sometimes even thousands of dollars on single children and posting it on TikTok. Viewers love seeing their favorite creators give back, but some have other things to say.
Some creators who have participated in the trend are Olivia Laux, Jesse Tierney, Camilla Araujo, Darcy McQueeny, James Charles, Yolanda Diaz and Tabatha Swatosh. Tabatha and Yolanda have gone above and beyond.
Yolanda Diaz picked to do three children, a teenager, a tween, and a baby. They bought an entire wardrobes worth of clothing for each kid, while keeping it to the basics to make sure they enjoyed everything. “Basically we are shopping for things we would wear” Yolanda said in her second angel tree TikTok. Lists were vague and when not knowing what to get they bought things they knew were popular and things they would buy, they didn’t get whatever, they got high quality products.
Tabatha has spoken up about the potential restrictions of snap benefits and a mother had talked about how hard Christmas will be for her and her family in the comments of Tabatha’s video due to the restrictions. So Tabatha has reached out to the mother. “I saw this mom comment on her post talking about how difficult holidays are and she has two little sons, she’s trying to do the best she can as a mom, so I thought it would be fun to go shopping for the sons, so I reached out to her asking for all the sons clothing sizes and all their favorite things.” Says Tabatha in her angel tree video.
A creator who is calling herself ‘cookiedough’ on TikTok has received lots of backlash for her video participating in the angel tree trend. She picked up two cards from the tree and said she only wanted to spend thirty dollars each because that was the minimum. She also said some other things that rubbed the audience the wrong way, like saying “So she said she wants a barbie doll but the thing is I don’t know what ethnicity she is so I don’t know her skin color, so I really don’t know what doll to get her”. Viewers are telling her not to participate in angel tree if you can only spend 30 dollars because then you can’t get the kid everything on their list. She has now deleted every video relating to the trend of her page and has made her account private.
Although this trend is wholesome and it is nice seeing your creators give back, not everyone can participate in this trend and that is okay. When looking to donate it is important to look at where you can really make an impact, and when it comes to Angel Tree those who should be participating are those how can give a couple hundreds away. These content creators are those people, and they are doing a great job giving back.
