Really lousy Christmas presents.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

I’ll warn you, this’ll be a little bit long… but the ending is either the coolest or worst present ever. To this day, I’m not sure which.

My mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas when I was about six years old. Having recently gone to F.A.O Schwartz for the first time, and loving stuffed animals and ponies the way… well, any six year old girl does, I told her I wanted a stuffed pony big enough for me to sit on and pretend to ride.

“Okay, honey, and what would you like from Grandma and Grandpa?”

Well, since she was going to get me a stuffed pony, I wanted Grandma and Grandpa to get me a stuffed cow. 'cause then I could be a cowgirl, y’see.

So, Christmas time rolls around, I dash out of my bedroom to our little fake tree, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but…

A three foot tall stuffed elephant. With a big red bow.

“I couldn’t find any ponies… but people ride elephants, too, so I figured it was close enough!”

And what did I end up getting from the G-Parents, you ask?

“Well, we didn’t see a stuffed cow anywhere that was big enough… but look! A life-sized stuffed sheep!”

I was a pretty well-mannered child, so I took my well-meaning elders’ gift attempts in stride and acted immensely grateful despite the fact that even now, nineteen years later, I’m just terribly, terribly confused by them.

The elephant was pretty cool, though. And the sheep had a bell. A little copper one.

122

I have a theory that some people enjoy looking at a lot of prettily-wrapped boxes under the tree. It doesn’t matter what’s in those boxes, but there has to be a lot of them. So any old crap can go in there, as long as there are a lot of pretty boxes under the tree.

Which is the only thing that can explain the horrible navy-blue elastic-waist polyester pants that I got from my mother-in-law one year. Those went to the homeless shelter.

Robin

123

She’s not a kind person, so I don’t know. I don’t know if I was supposed to be delighted to get so much or upset it was all awful.

She has since revealed a rather vicious aspect to her personality, so I’ll just say that I have no idea.

124

Wow… that’s awful.

When our kids were little my MIL would shop year-round at the Dollar General, Big Lots, the Gibralter Trading Center (a local flea-market type place), and so on. She would fill the biggest gift bags she could find with $2.00 knock-off Barbie dolls, inexpensive toys, and clothes. Lots of clothes. However, these gifts were given with the best of intentions and the kids liked most of them. I just wished that it was less quantity and more quality. It wasn’t too fun taking all of it home and dealing with the mess.

Talk about passive-aggressive behavior from your husand’s family! I need to get gifts for my new DIL? I’ll show you gifts… What did they get for him before he married you - was it the same sort of things?

125

A few years ago, my dad bought my mom a big gift box of various cheeses and crackers from one of those gift basket catalogs.

My mother is lactose intolerant. :smack:

My sister and I rolled our eyes along with our mother and quietly berated our father, but he just obliviously munched on the cheese and crackers. Yes, they are still married.

126

If it’s not too painful, let’s do!

I’ll go first; for some reason my friend thought I would want the yellow/black nail version of this:

http://cache.wists.com/thumbnails/7/c6/7c6db77b3fe9e875707b67351894f8e6-orig

for my 40th birthday. :confused:

This was after she had given me the purple one on the right

http://www.misternostalgia.zoovy.com/product/MONS1?meta=dealtime-MONS1

even though it had broken–the finger one was a replacement since the feet were no longer available.

She’s a wonderful person and had also given me a beautiful ornament–this was the ridiculous side of sublime and ridiculous.

127

I have to admit to giving screwy gifts.

I gave my girl friend a stapler and hole puncher (You know, the big monster that can take care of a book…) for her birthday. Many years later I still get crap from her about that. She still married me. We still have the hole puncher.

I gave my parents a pair of fire extinguishers. They thought that was pretty weird. Many years later their lawn mower caught fire in the garage. They called me up and told that it wasn’t such a bad gift after all.

Now, I try to stick to art.

128

You got a world’s greatest dad shirt and you’re not even a dad? Seriously?

129

A black ink cartridge for my printer. That was this year, from a close friend. Now, I know she’s a bit short on money this year like everyone else, and the ink cartridge is kind of an inside joke between us, so I get it, but still, it’s one of those, “…uh…thanks?..” moments, even now, for me. I still smiled, laughed about it, and went on.

Now if it was both a color one and a black one to make a set, okay, I can totally get that, but it’s like getting half of a whole, or something. Just feels weird.

130

My husband has a story like that. He and his brother came downstairs on Christmas morning to find that each of their stockings had one small piece of candy “coal” and nothing else. Christmas morning was pretty subdued, to say the least. Then his father asked him to go down to the basement to get something for him (I forget what), and he discovered a second Christmas tree with lots of gifts down there. He went running back up the stairs calling his brother, and there was much rejoicing. But I still think it was a dirty trick by his father.

131

That is a dirty trick, as was Jolly’s sister’s on him.

People like that should come to no good end, IMO. :mad:

Wanted to add that the year I got the pantyhose from dear MIL, my husband got a leather coat and his sister got a breadmaker.
I know I’ll never get a gift that I haven’t essentially done everything but shop for and wrap again in my life. It’s too bad, because I’m not that picky–I’d just like the people in my life to pay attention to my interests. I try to give thoughtful gifts to others–where’s the reciprocity?

132

My children saved their allowance years ago and bought me a Halloween sweater on sale from Walgreens. It was bright orange and black with Halloween figures all over it.
All.
Over.
It.

They were so excited (I was excited too, to see them so happy) that I decided to wear it for our Christmas dinner that night. We had a houseful that year and I remember people stopping in shock to see what I had on.

It was the ugliest sweater I’ve ever seen, but I cherish that sweater. I guess it might be my favorite gift, although it’s really awful. I still have it.

I had a beautiful floor length leopard-look coat that I love. I like having ONE odd item in my wardrobe.

That year I received leopard-look gloves, socks, hat, headband, nightgown, robe, scarf and boots:eek:. That was a mess.

133

A friend of mine put alot of thought into her boyfriends Christmas gifts. She bought him some cool clothes and CDs and a few other things. This was their first Christmas together and she wanted to spoil him a little. What did he give her? Sea Monkeys.

134

We accidentally did something like that to my daughter. When she was 6, we got her a bike, but hid it on the balcony of our upstairs apartment. We gave her the wrapped bike chain, bell, etc. We assumed – wrongly, as it turned out – that she’d assume there was a bicycle go to with the add-ons and go looking for it. Instead, she burst into tears and wailed, “That’s not FAIR! To give me these things and not give me a bicycle!”

Needless to say, we felt awful. Even if we did laugh about it later. :smiley:

135

My mom did the same kind of unintentional thing one year when our older daughter was about three. She gave several of the grandkids magazine subscriptions, but I guess she didn’t think about the fact that the little one would be too young to understand it. So when daughter opened the card and I read to her that she would be getting Sesame Street every month all year she just didn’t get it. When I asked her if she had told Grandma thank you for the present she said, “She didn’t give me a present.”

It turned out to be okay, once she got the idea through her head and actually started getting the magazines in the mail. She liked them, but she just hadn’t been able to grasp the abstract.

136

Add me to that list - but for my 13th birthday. It was a Saturday so as usual, regardless of the day, my parents announced I had to do chores. I got sent to the basement to sweep - a tough thing to do to a kid who has severe dust allergies. I couldn’t believe I was having to sweep the garage on my birthday- and worst of all that my DAD had sent me down there (my mother was the taskmaster, my dad was the softie.)

I was so mad and sweeping so feverishly, I never saw the brand new 3-speed bike with the big bow in the center of the room.

137

My worst gift was used deodorant from my wife’s Grandmother.

138

Generally, I would say a present falls out of the “lousy gift” category if it fits either of the following criteria.

  1. A gift that indicates to me that more than 10 seconds of thought was put into it, regardless of cost.
    or
  2. A gift with some monetary value that I could return or sell on eBay and get something that I could actually use.

My wife’s sister and brother-in-law (both well-paid intelligent professionals) routinely fail both checks. One year, my wife got a tiny paperweight that displayed the temperature, not time and date, just temperature. She’s a pre-school teacher, and I don’t even think she has a formal desk in her classroom. The next year, I got a book with brain teasers and logic puzzles. I like that sort of stuff, so it almost qualifies for filling criteria #1, except it was the SAME EXACT BOOK they gave me for my birthday 3 months earlier.

So now we just go out for a nice dinner instead of exchanging gifts.

139

ewww - dude!

my mom routinely tries to give my best friend (who works at a small christian school) half-used bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

I’ve gotten in the habit of “taking them to my friend” for her - and then disposing them.

Of course, my mom also tried to give this same married friend my wedding dress. Because, y’see, I was getting divorced. And my mom thought this friend (who btw, had been married for at least 10 years at this point) could use it . . . .

140

Actually this is a true theory - at least in some cases. I know this because my mother is one of them. Every year she gives my husband and I (or just me before I got married) a lovely “tasteful card” as a gift.* However, she just isn’t capable of having a Christmas tree without a big pile of wrapped presents under it, so she also does things like buy sticks of deoderant and toenail clippers and other similarly useful, if random, items to wrap and have “something under the tree”. Accepted family practice is to thank her sincerely (a gift is a gift) and then quietly find a home for the item (there’s a fair amount of horse-trading after the present opening, actually - the odd unwanted orphan generally gets either donated or thrown away (because who really needs a fifth pair of toenail clippers?)). My mom doesn’t mind - she encourages it, actually. To her, those presents are largely decorative. And to stop her from feeling like a bad parent for not having a bunch of wrapped presents for people under her tree.

Last year, she got my husband and I harmonicas (among other things). Which was a pure “WTF” moment for the two of us. I even gave her a profoundly confused look, to which she shrugged and responded “I couldn’t stand not having things wrapped under the tree - you can give them to your niece and nephew (who were arriving the day after Christmas for a visit)”. So we did. My brother and his wife weren’t very amused by the two-year-old’s vigorous attempt to learn how to play the harmonica, but he was pretty hilarious about it :smiley: And *really, really *determined. Also (it has to be said) not coming home with me.

*“Tasteful card” in my family is code for cash. Which, to quote my dad’s favorite axiom about gift giving, always fits and never goes out of style.