Anytime I get booze as a gift (which I never mind) I always assume it’s a re-gift. Tends to be true more often than not.
My parents (read: Mom, really) gave me a cardigan in a nice shade of blue, and an off-white mock turtleneck. I do need nice tops for work, but I’ve mentioned to Mom the problems I’ve been having, as anything that is too tight around my neck has a tendency to trigger headaches. I guess she forgot. It’s a pretty cardigan, though, and I’m sure I’ll wear that.
My in-laws (read: mom-in-law) gave us six cushions which I think are meant for our six wooden dining room chairs. They kind of sort of match the curtains in the dining room. But we got wooden chairs because we didn’t want any padding on the chairs… Maybe she’s hinting that she thinks they’re too hard to sit on?
Other than that, I got some very nice things, and more than I expected. Clearly the people in my life think I need to read more, as I have a lovely new stack of books!
Uhoh. Check for an expiration date on the Bailey’s.
All of them.
Soap, soap, sewing machine I already own, a couch throw I’d never use.
Well, wait. My aunt got me a gift card to the Egg & I and my student got me hot chocolate the last day before break. My SS gift was the best, though.
Just one here…my mother bought me a new blanket. It is light blue…my bedroom is pale pink, and my comforter is beige with purple and pink flowers and green leaves…it does not match anything. Even worse, it is made of this horrid polyester material, that, when I touched it, made my skin absolutely crawl.
She got very upset on Christmas day when I told her it was not me. She gave me the receipt. It is going back to the store…I have my eye on a pair of jeans and a shirt there…
I only got two gifts this year: my parents sent an amazon gift card; my SD Secret Santa nailed it and managed to crack me up at the same time - two gifts for the price of one!
(My brother and my friends all agreed to not exchange gifts this year.)
My MIL gave me a really gaudy (not sure there is any other kind) Vera Bradley bag. I’m hoping to sell it, but so far my Craigslist ad hasn’t gotten any responses.
I emailed my Amazon wish list to my parents. It was a really, really good idea.
Same here. Well we started this about 4 years ago. Once I realized that my brother was married and I had to buy “them” two gifts but “they” could get me just one gift, I re-evaluated the situation and called a gift moratorium on the whole extended family.
It’s taken a couple of years for everyone to really embrace it and feel good about the lack of fleece blankets and “driving gloves” but now I can tell the adults are relieved that … well, there is a total lack of duds 
Mainly the parents just gave me money- and a less detailed book on beekeeping than the one I already have, it does have nice pictures, but recommends homeopathic ‘treatments’ for stuff: and scented soap, again, which I don’t use, due to eczema; which you’d really think my mother would know about seeing as I’ve had it since birth, and stopped using soap in my teens when my doctor told me to.
Meh. It smells nice, and my housemate can use it.
Had a somewhat useless emergency phone charger from my Aunt- I doubt I’ll ever use it, but she was trying.
Some of my inlaws have slowly started giving bigger gifts to everyone again, which was pretty financially draining a few years ago when we finally stopped. :smack: We’d agreed on Secret Santa exchanges only, plus small ($5), preferably hand-made gifts to others if you wanted.
One sister-in-law got us a battery-operated wine bottle sealer. Kind of useless since we don’t not finish a bottle, but we tried it out last night. Broken right out of the box. Considering her last gift to me included “make your own salsa” dry spice packs that had an expiration date six months prior, I think this might be another clearance table item. I’d really rather not get a gift than have to bring something home and have it take up room in my trash.
Hmm…my niece gave me a small crockpot-y thing which can either be warmed through the based or a tealight candle. I already have 4 crockpots (all but one gifts) which I don’t use. I live alone and don’t cook much, and when I do I’m more likely to use one of my pressure cookers than a crockpot. Still, it was sweet.
My sister gave me an electric heater that looks like a woodstove and has faux flames, explaining I can use it when my real wood pellet stove isn’t working properly. She was excited to give it to me and wanted me to open it before Christmas. I don’t like fake fires and have a few electric space heaters which I rarely use because they’re expensive to run. Again, I thanked her very nicely.
And one which isn’t a dud exactly, but not what I was really looking for - my step-father bought me a lightduty Poulan chainsaw. I’d told him that I was looking for a used heavy-duty workhorse at auctions, because the light-duty ones aren’t good enough to handle a full day’s use when my hired chore guy comes out to work on clearing woods. So I got a girly chainsaw, which is nice because it’s light enough for me to use, but isn’t really what I was looking for. Sort of like getting a paperback Websters when you really wanted on OED.
StG
I absolutely LOVE those things!! I got one for my boyfriend’s youngest nephew’s birthday many months ago and his sister called me up swearing the next day (she was also laughing). I suspect it’s voice box didn’t last long but I thought it was hilarious and I have to play with them every time I see one. My boyfriend thinks they’re creepy as hell and said I can’t buy any more because I insist on playing with them before wrapping them.
I voted “None,” as my sole gift was a fifth of Tanqueray gin. (The wife and I have a big trip coming up and so agreed to go light on the presents this year.)
I don’t need more stuff. The house is cluttered enough as it is, and I have all the gadgets I need. I made this as clear as possible to anyone who I knew would be wanting to buy me a Christmas present and wouldn’t take “please don’t buy me anything” as a valid answer. My Amazon wishlist had several things on it that I actually do want or need, and I was really hoping that would help.
I got two desk calendars. When I’m at my desk, my computer is my calendar, and if I need to check a calendar for any reason, I would use a wall calendar so I could see a whole month - what good is just having a square beside me on my desk with today’s date on it? Sure, it’s got a cute cat on it, but I could happily have lived without.
And my brother-in-law and his wife, as much as I love them, make me crazy with their creative gift ideas. This year they gave me an “all edges” brownie pan. Now, it’s thoughtful in a way, because they know I like the edges best. So it’s cute. But my husband likes the insides best - so we were fine with normal brownie pans. Oh well. I know they were trying to find fun and creative gifts and it’s ok, but I doubt the brownie pan will ever come out of its box. Like the self-stirring coffee mug from last year.
And my husband, well, he tried. I pointed him towards an Etsy shop that sells a style of pendant I like, and I mentioned it would be nice to get that with a specific inscription, a little joke between the two of us. For example’s sake, let’s say it’s 
or something. Well, I opened the box on Christmas and it was the pendant but no inscription. He asked the seller and she could only stamp one letter on the pendant, so he figured it was more about the pendant than the inscription and bought it anyway. My fault for not being clear about it, I guess. Maybe I can get it engraved instead.
I got one stocking stuffer I had no interest in.
I liked all my other gifts though. I didn’t need any of them, except the parka, but I am glad to have them.
Mum got me underwear and pyjamas four sizes too large, underwear for my daughter a size too small, cologne for my partner that was one step up from last year’s Brut 33 gift pack (little isn’t), one of those tiny fold out couches for my son but not the one I asked her to get, a herb pot for me that I’d asked for but after carefully establishing that I wanted a terracotta one exactly like the ones we looked at together, she went somewhere else and bought a glazed one (I like it just fine, I just don’t know why she asked me what I prefer and then bought the opposite), a magnet for my non-magnetic fridge… it’s all well-meant but I don’t know why she wastes my time asking what style of thing I want only to ignore me utterly, and why she can’t ask what sizes we need if she’s buying us clothes. She never keeps receipts and she’s torn the tags in half (and I’ll bet she doesn’t remember where she got them in the first place), so it’s all unreturnable. The local charity shop will benefit from them.
Ironically, when I asked her to make a donation to a worthwhile cause in my name for my birthday she refused because she wanted to get ME something.
Not me, but a woman my mother works with gave everyone hand sanitizer. WTF?
None…because I didn’t get anything at all.
But that is fine, I don’t actually like giving or receiving gifts that much anyway. I much prefer to choose my own stuff. (note - I do like giving to my kids, they don’t miss out although the sum total of their presents this year had to fit into a small suitcase as Christmas was in Austria).
Luckily my wife is of the same mind and our extended families have never been ones for lavish gifts.
Thing is, I have everything I want. That in itself is far more than I need. Reading through the other replies here makes me a little queasy. so much stuff, so many things, so many explicit and implicit obligations…not my thing at all.
I couldn’t agree more. I felt quite horrified by the sheer volume of stuff we all received this year. It felt wrong to be consuming so much. A large part of my irritation with the “not quite right” stuff I mentioned above is that it was given to us for the sake of giving. Not needed, not wanted, not useful, nothing but an object to fill a space in a stocking. There are so many in the world who have nothing, yet we’re buying each other bits of plastic rubbish, utter garbage that contributes to pollution and landfill. The waste is just obscene.