Last year my SIL gave my husband a decorative jar of popcorn. He’d given her 4 tickets to the Rolling Stones several weeks before Xmas, so she knew she was getting something good. :rolleyes: (I’m not saying a good present has to cost a lot of money, I’m just saying – a jar of popcorn? That’s like a gift you give the mailman or your orthodontist, not someone you’ve known all your life. It shows absolutely zero amount of thought and effort.)
When I was about 20 my father’s wife (I refuse to honor here with any name that includes the word mother) gave me a geneology kit. She taped a note on it that she had started it for me. How nice. Unfortunately, she placed her name on the mother’s block then filled in everything for her side of the family. She took the time to fill in my name, my father’s name and the names of 2 of my 5 siblings. I had also just married but for the block for my wife’s name she had filled in “NONE” as if I never planned to marry.
I burned it in a fireplace that night. She gave my then 14 year old brother a new motorcycle that Christmas. My apparent lack of enthusiasm has resulted in no gifts from either her or my father in the 27 years since.
Last year, my husband had just lost his job. We asked the family to give us money or gift certifacate type gifts. They refused saying it wasn’t Christmasy,( we were going to use the money to buy groceries). So I was going to take all the gifts (except my son’s) and sell them on ebay. But they were so hideous I couldn’t sell them; a set of solid white bath towels, a throw with a vegetable design… just to name a couple. It made me feel less guilty for giving them things I had around the house, (nice unused, still in the package things).
My son always gets bad gifts, he’s autistic and I guess they figure he won’t complain. The other kid in the family gets exspensive toys, my son gets coloring books and puzzles.
Not me, but one year my aunt gave my dad a homemade calender, address labels, and magnets.
Oh, how nice you say!
Hardly. The magnets had blurry, cheap clipart prints on them-crooked, I might add. The calender was just blank pages printed from her computer-not bound together, and no pictures, just blank. You know, that idea COULD have been so nice-she could have used old family photos, filled in personalized dates and anniversaries. Nope.
The address labels didn’t even have the my dad’s first name on them-just his last name. They were so OBVIOUSLY something she dashed off at the last minute. She gave the same thing to my Aunt Ginny. (TECHNICALLY, these were gifts from two of her children, to their godparents. But a lot of the time, her son, my dad’s godson, doesn’t want to bother, so she does it for him).
Then there was the time she gave him a mini Chicken Soup for the Soul calender. Blech. My dad doesn’t like that kind of crap. We used it for scrap paper.
Thankfully, my cousin is now old enough to pick out gifts on his own.
Last year, my father got a nice bottle of champagne that we shared on New Years.
(IT’s not so much the gifts, it’s just that she just throws them together half-assed and then acts like she made this big freaking effort.)
Hmm, I’ve been pretty lucky on the gift front. That is, until Christmas 2001. We went to my fiance’s grandparents on Christmas Day. We gave them each their gifts and his grandmother disappeared shortly after that. 15 min later she came down with a card with money in it for my fiance and a 1/2 empty bottle of body wash for me…addressed to Crystal…my name is Krista. LOL
Sometimes I look at some of the gifts I’ve got from family and wonder if my perception of myself is an hallucination! You’d think after 38 years they might have noticed my interests, way I dress, etc…
People I give gifts to will be so excited, and so happy – maybe I’m more observant? I seem to manage to hit the nail on the head – I’m the kind of person people will ask, ‘Will you shop for me?’
It’s bizarre – yes, I spin and weave, and I have some pet sheep…but please, for the love of God, Allah, Ba’al, or the Great Pink Pixie in the Sky, stop giving me sheep-themed stuff!!! I also play rock and roll guitar, and love Dr Who, and collect Kinks’ memorabilia and 60s clothes, no one has noticed this? I don’t keep it a secret! You come to my house and it looks like a psychedelic freak out, and you give me earrings that are fuzzy sheep?
Fortunately, my best friend comes through with celestially fab pressies!*
But, in keeping with the tone of this thread:
From my gran, the world’s most skint woman: A broken bracelet she found on the pavement…a fake ruby ‘birthstone’ necklace (my birthday is in September)…
From my dad, after promising the then-20s aged Ms Boods a cameo ring, a plastic toy cameo from one of those little girl play jewelry sets
From my sister in law, who apparently has never noticed I wear and collect 60s Carnaby St clothes when not wearing a lot of black, too small pastel coloured jumpers (sweaters) shot through with sparkly threads
From my monster-in-law, the dreaded applied and glittered sweatshirts
My partner: Last year a German dictionary, the kind of small paperback ones you might use in high school. Even though he knows that I have a comprehensive Collins German dictionary I have been using for the last 15 years…sometimes he gives me stuff, and I wonder, ‘hallo, have we met?’ It’s the kind of stuff you give in an office pick-a-pressie gift exchange…
The prize winner was from mum – my first year in graduate school, I was literally 1000s of miles from home, and could not afford airfare to go back for the hols. My mum sent me about a dozen beautifully wrapped xmas boxes, all shapes and sizes, and said if I had to be alone over the hols, I could at least make it festive, etc. I put the boxes under my wee fake tree, and did have some solace, all these lovely boxes…which, I discovered on xmas eve (which is when we do pressies) contained boxes of kleenix, kotex, ‘toaster pastries’…I just cried…
*One year to my utter utter jaw dropping surprise, I unwrapped a Kinks ‘Village Green’ from New Zealand, in mint condition, a very rare and impossible to find record…one of those, ‘I am not really seeing this, am I?!’ :eek: 
When I told the above folks about this fab pressie, I was met with, 'Ew, what did you want that for? (Their general reaction when I describe the cool and lovely pressies I get…)
:rolleyes:
One year I did a secret Santa with my mother’s husband’s family. The gift was supposed to be $20 or less. I bought a game of some sort for one of the kids. It was like 15 bucks, no big deal and not a lot of time spent. So, I wasn’t expecting much in return. What I got was shocking. In the mail, I received 1 place mat, 1 coloring book (that looked like it was sitting in a drawer for the last 20 years), and something else really bizzare. They re-gifted me! After that I did not participate in their idea of Christmas. At least I went to the store. Besides at my age what am I going to do with a coloring book and no children of my own. And 1 place mat, what the hell is that. Sorry for the rant and Happy Thanksgiving.
…jeez, you people make me ashamed. There’s no way I can top used underwear or a pencil.
In my case, it was probably a used gym bag with a zippered thingy on the side intended to hold your tennis racket, from my grandmother.
It was not packaged, and sufficiently worn that it was plainly a garage sale acquisition.
And I don’t play tennis. Never have.
And she seemed to have the idea that this was JUST the thing for me. Was quite proud of her acumen in selecting just the right gift. I smiled and kept my mouth shut, of course; love my granny dearly, but she’s never been wrapped too tight…
Stop the presses! All these tales of woe have saved at least one person from an icky pressie, bad childhood memory, and a warped psyche – my mum participates in a ‘secret pressie’ gift exchange for the needy at her church, the sort of thing where people can ask for a wishful thing. Mum’s selected (it’s all at random) a 12 year old girl who’s asked for ‘cool jewelry’ – mum tells me she’s all set to buy the kid a watch.
A watch?!
I know someone with one of those one-of-a-kind funky clothes/jewelry boutiques, the whole incense, body glitter, toe rings, Aladdin’s cave of neato too cool emporium experience, and I will be headed there this weekend to fill up a nice box of dead fab gear for this child…
Fortunately I have the thigh high boots and cape it takes to turn into Anti-Awful-Krimble-Pressie Boods.
The only bad gift I have ever recieved was a hideous nightshirt from my dad. This was after my parents divorce and I think the new wife had something to do with it.
But anyway, I ask for specific things…right down to color and size. Also in my family, gift certificates are the best gifts one could recieve.
So everyone needs to implant two words in their family members and friends brains: gift certificate (if the word cash doesn’t work out)
My mother never gives me what I ask for. It will be in the same genre, but not be right. For example, when I was 10, I asked for the Star Wars Soundtrack. I got the Xanadu soundtrack. I couldn’t have actually WANTED the first one, it was just classical music - with no words!!!
And she wonders why now, 25 years later, I refuse to make a list. There is no point! She’ll get me what she wants to.
This all reads like a re-gifting thread.
But my SIL bought me a lump of coal. Now she’s as mean as a snake and might have received it herself, but methinks that she went out of her way to find it for me.
I can’t say I’ve ever recieved a truly bad gift. Just stuff that I had little use for (like a lipstick pin from a gift exchange. It was cute, but I don’t wear pins, so someone who would wear it took it and I ended with something else. Either a mug or candy) or stuff that I thought are not particularly good gifts.
A good example of the latter tends to come from my mother. She tends to get me everything I want on my list, but also surprises me with stuff(usually with stuff that are pleasant surprises). However, two disappointing gifts included a mouse pad(that I didn’t need) and a CD cleaner. Heh
Oh, I’d love to! I really would. But they refuse cash and gift certificates because “it’s so impersonal!” Of course it is, you dummy, you have no taste!
Personally I think gift certificates are a great gift. At least you are not getting something you would never use and would end up regifting with the fear that someone would find out.
There are lots of stores you can get them from too. I would still try.
I LOVE getting gift certificates! I agree that it’s better than getting something that you might end up hating.
Hmmm… I got a really cool looking T-shirt that said FBI.
If only it weren’t 3 sizes too small… I wanted to put it on, and so I did. My cousin had to cut the shirt off me -_-;
I can’t beat recycled undies but I have gotten a matching pair of . . .
TOILET BRUSHES!!!
from who else but my mother-in-law. If you’ve ever watched “Everybody Loves Raymond” then you know my MIL. She’s Marie, she’s always “helping” which is really pathetically disguised contempt at how incompetent she thinks I am.
I don’t happen to think a toilet brush adds to the decor of my bathroom so I hide mine away with the cleaners. Since she could never find it she decided to buy me one for each bath.
“Gee . . . um . . . er . . . thanks. . . what a . . . <cough> thoughtful . . . gift.”
And let me just say that my toilets have always been clean.
She’s also given me (for Christmas) pantyhose fit for a black woman and I am a very pasty white child. She also brings dog food for my dog whenever she comes to my house. I guess she thinks we have been slowly starving him over the last 10 years we’ve had him. :rolleyes:
Heh, last Xmas my little sister (7 yrs) gave me a pencil wrapped in red ribbon. She apologized for it on the card, and silly me thought it was endearing.
Sadly I should’ve kept it instead of it getting lost among the wrappings and whatnot 
Both my mom and my stepdad have since passed away; but, many, many years ago, before he and my mom got married, my stepdad gave me an electric eyebrow plucker for Christmas.
He really was the dearest man in the whole world and I know that he loved me and meant no ill will. It’s just that being a man, he had no idea what a teenage girl would want or need…
BTW, I have lovely eyebrows…