Mindy Kaling says giving this gift at a holiday party is a huge ‘faux pas’

Mindy Kaling talks the holidays, including why she likes to step back from kitchen duty, and which gift she thinks is a big holiday 'faux pas.'

Holiday etiquette is something that might just be second nature to you. If you've hosted and attended holiday parties for years, there's no doubt you've compiled a mental list of things you avoid around the holiday season - for example, etiquette experts just revealed some of the biggest etiquette mistakes you can make, like not personalising your Christmas cards for the holiday season. 

Mindy Kaling, 42, recently gave her two cents on the topic, providing another insight that she's grown to abhor over the years in her holiday party experience. 

As a mom, she's usually pretty busy getting things ready for her family around the holiday season - for example, decorating her house for Christmas and preparing meals for her family. That's why, when she hosts a holiday party, she thinks it's a big "faux pas" to bring something for the host that takes the "the host away from having fun," she said. 

"When I go to someone's house, particularly for a dinner party, I think a big faux pas is [bringing] something that needs to take the host away from having fun," she said in an interview with TODAY.com.

She goes on to give examples of this common guest mistake - such as bringing uncut flowers, or bringing a dish that needs to be heated up without first letting the host know you'll be doing so. "So if you get them loose flowers in a bouquet, it's like now they have to go be a floral arranger," she said. "Or if it's like oh this is a food you need to heat up, it's room in the fridge or the oven which might already be spoken for, so I'm very sensitive to this type of thing."

Instead of bringing some of these items that may need to be attended to on the spot, she offered some alternatives that could be useful as a gift to give a host this holiday season. 

"“I make a really good apple chutney in my family, that I can just make big batches of it in December and then if there are holiday parties, I can give people apple chutney that I make at home, which I love," she said. 

She also noted that she really loves to give away Christmas ornaments, as they're an easy thing for a host to incorporate in their home by simply hanging it on their Christmas tree. "The other thing I love is if people celebrate Christmas, I really like bringing a Christmas ornament because I can just put it right on the tree and it just adds to that collection, particularly if there’s an inside joke or anything associated with it."

You could also give something simple like a candle, a Christmas decoration for their home, or a bottle of their favourite wine or alcohol of choice.