There are a multitude of gift threads around right now, but none seem to pose the simple question:
What is the worst Christmas gift you’ve ever received?
For me it was these little candies that one of my great-aunts used to give me every year. (What was it called? Argh… racking brain… digging through painful suppressed memories… regressing to child…) Aha! Nips Caramels. I hated those things. Luckily my great aunt is dead now, so I don’t receive them any more. (Ow! I’m just kidding! Don’t hurt me!) Actually I’m only 90% certain they were Nips, but whatever they were, they sucked something powerful.
The other worst Christmas gift I ever received was when my dad got me a circuitboard science kit when I was 11 or 12. I had my heart set on a video game instead, so I pitched an ungrateful fit and told him I hated it. It went on the shelf and sat there. A year and a half later, I remembered it and excitedly went to go find it, but my dad had given it away. It was a good gift, actually, I just think I was a little too young for it at the time.
In addition to getting flamed by all the Nips lovers on this board, I’d like to hear of truly terrible Christmas/holiday gifts you have received. Other terrible non-holiday gift stories are fine too though.
When I was 8 or 9 this one aunt and uncle of mine got me some sort of set of first date of issue US postage stamps (nothing really valuable or interesting). I was not then, am not now, and at no point in the forseeable future will I be interested in collecting stamps. The binder was put away and is still around here somewhere…I should probably eBay it.
When I was 16 or so this same aunt and uncle got me some cassette of classical music. My musical taste at the time (not that anyone asked) ran more towards the Rolling Stones and Bob Seger. Uh, thanks for the gift…I don’t think I ever listened to it.
I’m not complaining really, I grew up very comfortably. It isn’t like I needed any more stuff.
One Christmas I got just clothes no toys (aged 11 or 12 ish), I couldn’t work out what I had done so naughty to deserve that. I still don’t know if it was accident or punishment. They were totally normal clothes, socks, jumper, trousers, nothing much fun.
As a child, my sister got me at one of those Santa Shops* at school this big hair clip with all the colored and sparkled shoelaces on them. Remember those? It was big and hideous and gaudy and I felt sooo guilty NOT liking it. However, my mother solved the problem by taking the shoelaces off of the clip, so I could wear just one at a time, tied around my ponytail.
*We went to Catholic school, so there wasn’t a problem of mixing religion and state.
I knew a woman (call her Jan) whose middle-aged Dad had remarried to a woman with very strange ideas about Christmas gifts (call her Linda). Jan had a son, about 9 or 10 at the time I think…
Linda gave him shower curtains as a Christmas present.
More recently, in a sort of Blast from the Past reënactment of the above, one of my girlfriend’s long-term friends gave her a set of those slinky keyhole-shaped shower curtain rings as a Christmas present. She wasn’t 10 years old and the giver wasn’t her Grandpa’s new husband, and the two of them were not really in the habit of exchanging gifts, but even so… we kind of looked at each other when she opened it and she said “OK…”
My little brother and his first wife gave me a used t-shirt for Christmas. She thought I would like it because it had an Formula 1 type race car on it. Although I am a fan of auto racing, that type of racing has never held my interest. It was also 2 sizes too small and still had the Goodwill price tag on the sleeve.
A small (notepad size) clipboard. Yay! It came from an aunt who nearly always had bad taste in gifts. (My sister got a horrific tank top from her…back in '80s when tank tops were unthinkable as outerclothes.) But then again, she gave me a phone for my high school graduation (in '92). I still use it! She was about the only relative who I got more than a card from.
Shee-yit. Just this year my mother-in-law gave me a refrigerator coil brush, i.e. a long skinny brush one is supposed to use to periodically clean one’s refrigerator coils. We’ve never once mentioned our refrigerator to her, I didn’t know you could clean the coils, and we rent so it’s not my job to clean the coils. We live on opposite sides of the country, too, so it’s not like she had it lying around and just dropped it off. She had to wrap it, and carry it with her luggage when she came to visit at Thanksgiving.
Remember the scene in Breakfast Club where Judd Nelson describes getting a carton of smokes for Christmas?
That happened to me. OK, it was an Office gift exchange and the guy who drew my name, all he knew about me was that I rolled my own cigs, so it wasn’t even a carton, it was a can of Tobacco. It was my brand, at least.
My father’s then-girlfriend, who had been my parents’ marriage counselor ( :eek: ), gave me a yule log candle with three wicks in it. Actually she sort of heaved it at me. However, I got her back. She’s really domestic so I gave her an apron. A black one.
It’s a really, really weird bible, that for some reason looks like a soda-can top. She mailed it to me, at school. Okay…
I’m going to see her on Christmas day!
I was raised Jewish. This she knows well.
I am not religious in the least. This she knows well. We’ve discussed it.
Guess what she got me for Christmas last year? This. “The Catholic Bible.” After which, my parents discussed with her that while gifts are appreciated, they’re not comfortable with her blatently trying to convert me or something.
For one, completely batshit insane. She’s my mother’s sister, and very much the ‘black sheep’ in the family - she married a southern, republican methodist and fast adopted that lifestyle. And promptly decided that it was the only way to live, regardless of having been raised in a fiercely-liberal, pro-union, Irish-Catholic family. :dubious:
A friend gave me a box of Splenda this year. Odd gift, but then, Splenda is kinda expensive, so I was happy.
A few years ago, my grandma sent me a clock, shaped like a bear, and it’s body was the clock face. It was ugly, but that’s not the worse part. I recognized this clock from her home…but I could have even forgiven that. The glass on the clock was badly scratched and one of the ear’s were broken off, and the battery case was both empty and missing its back.
My husband got a brand new pocket-knife from her the same year.
To this day, I have no idea what the hell happened. Was she mad at me? She’s crazy, but she’s not senile, and nobody else got such a bizarre gift.
Last year wasn’t much of an improvement. She sent me small plastic comb/brush set. The sort that you would use on a small child with thin, straight hair. Not the sort that you would ever, ever use on somebody with long, thick, curly hair. I know she knows what I look like, and she worked as a hair stylist for years and years, so I can’t figure out what the heck she was thinking.
My husband got another pocket-knife. This time with an ivory (looking. probably fake) handle.
This year? Who the hell knows. I haven’t gotten any deliveries yet, so she might just forget entirely.
My paternal grandmother had the habit of buying the same gift for every male (or female, or juvenile) member of the family. One year, we (all the men) each got a two-foot-wide, pot-metal fake-antique-brass eagle…like you’d mount over the garage door if you had no taste whatsoever.
My aunt (and my mother, but she had died by this time) had a real hard time believing I was growing up. To them , I was always “Little Spoons–isn’t he cute?” even though I managed to break the age of 20, and then of 30, without any real problems. So when I offhandedly made the comment one July (July!) that it was hard to iron shirts for work when all I had to iron them on was the kitchen table, I didn’t expect it would be remembered.
Boy, was I wrong.
The following Christmas, what did I find under the tree? An ironing board. My aunt thought it was a great gift for Little Spoons (who was age 36 at the time). I wasn’t pleased, and she didn’t quite understand why–until I carried the damn thing out to her car, still wrapped, and stuffed it in the back seat, saying, “I’m a grownup, dammit; treat me as one.”
On the plus side, I haven’t had any such problem since.
It was a good gift, actually, I just think I was a little too young for it at the time.