One year, when I was in I think my late 30’s and by then eating mostly natural-ingredient foods, two of my neices gave me one of those holiday food packs full of heavily-additived cheese foods, salamis, crackers, and pastries.
I tried hard to summon up the look I would have had on my face if somebody had given me one of those when I was in college. I used to look longingly at them in the stores, and wish very hard that somebody would give me one. But by the time I got it . . .
My grandma once gave me a rusty, small cast-iron piggy bank that had a handful of pennies in it. It might have meant more if I hadn’t seen it on a shelf in her house for years. She wasn’t passing along an heirloom or anything; she just didn’t feel like going shopping one year and picked it off the shelf and wrapped it.
Shortly afterwards, she told me that going shopping was too much trouble so she wasn’t going to give me any more birthday or Christmas presents.
My mother sewed me an Oxford-style button down shirt out of some lovely blue-and -white raw silk plaid. I love raw silk and she knew that. But that shirt sat in my closet unworn for two years because I was disappointed with it. She asked why, I explained that the collar was wrong because it was short at a time when huge collars were in but that I still loved the shirt and was betting on the style to change. Later the same year, the style did change and I already had the perfect shirt to wear. I wore it until I couldn’t any more because parts of me had outgrown it. I still think of it with great fondness. Made with love, saved and worn with love, remembered with love.
My grandparents gave me a shirt with MY FACE printed on it! MY FACE when I was about 6 or 7. No way in HELL was I going to wear that to school. The hazing I imagined was palpable. Never wore that shirt once. Got rid of it somehow, don’t remember.
From my parents for Christmas, when I asked “Santa” for a telephoto zoom lens, a table made from a telephone cable spool.
From my roommate as a birthday present: a multi-tool…to replace the one he borrowed from me and somehow manged to lose.
She was giving you the greatest gift of all: the relief and satisfaction that you were no longer troubling her.
My son was around 10 or 11 and at the time was really into collecting sports cards - hockey, baseball, football, you name it. It was a really big thing in the 90s. He had some of them in albums that had special pages that held probably 9 cards or so but he still had loads of cards just tossed around. He mentioned that he’d like the cardboard storage boxes he saw at the card shop. So I mentioned this whenever someone asked me what he would like for his birthday. We always had a family party for birthdays - grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. So all were gathered and it was time to open gifts. As he opened them, I could see the disappointment on his face. EVERYONE had bought him a storage box or two. So he was basically opening empty cardboard boxes. He was gracious and thanked everyone. After the party was over and everyone had gone home he came to me and said, “Mom, that was the worst birthday I ever had. All I got were empty boxes.” I felt bad. I think we took him somewhere special the following weekend and let him pick out a special gift that wasn’t an empty box!
I always remember the year that a great big box appeared behind the Christmas tree, with nice paper and a tag indicating it was from great grandma to me and my brother. What could such a large box contain? We speculated with glee. On Christmas morning, we made a beeline for it. Tore off the paper to reveal…a clothes hamper. Said grandma, “Now maybe you’ll pick up your clothes.”
Great grandma, my ass…
I also got a disappointing box versus gift surprise. I had wanted Crossbows and Catapults and had a gift that was the right size and I could even feel something protruding from the edge that was the same size as the Crossbows and Catapults token they showed on TV. When I opened it it turned out that the protrusion was a rubber bumper for a piece of luggage. Fortunately I did get Crossbows and Catapults eventually.
When I was 12 all I got for Christmas was a 6 pack of socks. Nothing else. Same with my 11 year old brother. Our 2 sisters both got new sweaters and pants. My younger brother, then 5, got a new pair of shoes and a couple Hot Wheels cars. My mother was having a tough time then and basically told us we were lucky to get anything. My parents had divorced earlier in the year. Later that day our mother took us to see our father, we were all hoping for something good there. We were each given a $10 bill. Later when our mother picked us up, my dad gave her a child support check. He had deducted the $50 he gave us from that check. On the drive home we all handed over the $10 bills so my mother could buy some groceries.
Much later in the mid 80’s, me and my siblings decided to have a gift exchange. On Thanksgiving we drew names and set $20 limit on the gifts. I bought a cool hand made clock for the older sister that cost much more than the limit. She really liked it. Our youngest brother chose my name. I opened my gift and found a used t-shirt that featured a sprint car driver that I had never heard of. And the shirt was 2 sizes too small. Apparently he had forgotten about the gift exchange till a few days before Christmas and told his wife to go find something for me. The sad part was it still had the 99 cent price tag on it. At the time I was single and there was no one else to give me any gifts so that ended up being the only thing I got for that Christmas. Needless to say that was the end of our family gift exchange.
Damn, dude. You won the thread.
They left it on in case you wanted to Reap that Windfall via return.
Nothing at all here like some of the tales told (really sad ones 
).
But in terms of “what the hell were they thinking”
A friend got her first bra - for Christmas (we were about 11 or 12 at the time). Her mother made her open the package in front of her father and brother. This was a mother who was otherwise pretty clued in. I don’t recall whether this was before or after the time we found a bra left out in the family room - belonging to a relative - and hung it from the light over the kitchen table. If it was before the kitchen table incident, well, the decoration was well deserved. If it was AFTER the kitchen table incident, well, I guess the Christmas gift was deserved.
A couple years ago, my husband bought me a chin strap (the sort you use if you use a CPAP device) for Christmas. I opened it, and said “You shouldn’t have! No, really, you SHOULDN’T HAVE”.
I mean, it’s something I needed, and the kind I like has become hard to find, and it showed a certain amount of thought… but I carefully explained that medical devices are never, ever good gifts.
I’m surprised no one so far has admitted to being the recipient of a passive aggressive gift. e.g. One year my MIL gave me a book about ‘how to organize your house and your life’
Well, I’ve gotten several Bibles.
Nowthat’swhatI’mtalkingabout!
Our seriously overweight next door neighbor received a beat up used treadmill from her husband (that she had just separated from) for Christmas one year. And no, she never once used it on sheer principle.
I don’t think the gift I got was passive aggressive. It just showed that they really, really didn’t know me.
It was a gift certificate ( I think it was for $50 - and this was about twenty years ago) to Burlington Coat Factory. At the time, I had a big hooded black trenchcoat. It was darn near waterproof. It had many pockets. It made me feel like a wizard. It was VERY comfortable. I could use it as a blanket.
The gift giver gave them gift thinking I would react ‘Now, I don’t have to wear that black rag! I can have a nice new coat!’ Instead, my reaction was ‘Why would I want a new coat? You don’t know me at all do you? I thought you understood me.’
I actually wept.
It would have been fun to print off a book cover entitled “45 ways to stop being a complete bitch to others” and give the book back to her next year with this new cover on it…
I got not one but two Partridge Family albums from my David Cassidy addicted cousin. I was into Zepplin.
I’m thinking those were re-gifts. If everyone knew the cousin was into David Cassidy, they probably gave them Partridge Family albums.