My ex-boyfriend got me a pair of contact lenses for Christmas and I was absolutely LIVID! This is a mom-to-daughter kind of necessity gift not a romantic boyfriend-to-girlfriend relationship gift. I was hurt, angry, upset, betrayed, sad… yeah, I over-reacted but it just wasn’t a very lovey-dovey gift in my eyes (pun intended) and I was crushed! It was a very boring, reliable gift but I had thought my mother was going to purchase the lenses.
He paid a lot for them at the time, now they’re much more inexpensive but I felt like he’d given me a toaster or vacuum. A horrible idea in my opinion and he couldn’t understand why I was so upset. He thought it was very helpful, that he was being a good boyfriend to think about the health of my eyesight. It was helpful but I didn’t want helpful from him. I wanted romance, something that showed me he loved AND lusted for me, perhaps a gift of sexy lingerie or jewelry. Boy, I am mean, huh?
This was also the boyfriend I ripped the heart out of when he caught me cheating. sigh Heartless bitch=me.
My husband’s brother was talking about Christmas shopping when we saw him Thanksgiving day. He intends to go shopping for the “secret Santa” person he has chosen from the hat we pass around each year, but always ends up shopping for himself. He picks up something half-assed on December 23rd or 24th and comes to the Christmas party with the gift(s) still in the Meijer or KMart bag, complete with tags and price stickers still attached.
Thoughtful? No. At least you know where to go to exchange them. One year my husband was the lucky guy that got $75 worth of socks, golf tees, and golf balls. Meanwhile, his brother had a new wardrobe and tons of new electronics.
It was for my birthday, not Christmas, but I still thought I’d share. My grandmother, bless her heart, got me a Barney T-shirt. When I was 13 years old! FYI, I never watched that show much to begin with, and hadn’t watched it at all after the age of 7.
Little off-topic, but my English teacher for Valentine’s Day this year got beer nuts from his wife. He, meanwhile, had planned a rather thoughtful little gift (I can’t remember what it was, but it beat the pants off of beer nuts) and had helped their four-year-old make a big Valentine for her, and made one for their baby to present to her. I will never forget the look on his face when he told us he got beer nuts for Valentine’s Day. Poor guy.
While definately not as bad as some of the items listed, I have my own tale of woe.
O so many years ago, our family decided to switch to a “Secret Santa” deal from the standard “everybody buy everybody else presents” operation. As a kid, this did not affect me at all; all the adults still gave the kids presents. I was at the age when the only really viable gift was money, and Xmas was one of the two “ka-ching” days of the year, the other being my birthday. However, there are only three people in my current “generation” in the family: myself, my brother, and my cousin. A few years later, I was told that the family was consolidating the kids into the Secret Santa affair, that we were old enough to find good gifts, etc. I saw the dollar signs swirling away into the skies… and then I perked up. After all, I’d be getting not five small presents, but one huge one! How awesome could that be? I scrimped and saved, and found for my recipient a crystal ornament that I knew she’d like (since she collected them) that took a chunk of my spending cash.
Xmas came, and I got a single pair of socks from my aunt. Hiking socks, incredibly thick, that make your feet wet just by being in the same room and you wouldn’t want to wear unless you were climbing Everest in winter. Like I said, it’s not as bad as some of these, but I was pretty crushed at the time.
Last year I got a roll of toilet paper. It had 10 lottery scratchers inside, and not a single one was a winner. I did, however, clean up playing darts, poker, and bingo.
The first Christmas after we were married, Mr. look@hergo and I got a 5 pound bag of sugar from his Grammy. She enclosed a card that said that she wished she could get out shopping and get us something better, but at least this way we would “have some sweetness in our new life together”. It was the most touching thing I have ever received.
The worst Christmas gifts I ever got were from my now ex-husband, who got me a bottle of Canadian Club – that’s all – one year, and stole a flower arrangement from a dumpster behind a hotel the next year.
One of my aunts is a pharmacist and it has become a holiday tradition that every gift you get from her is something emblazoned with a drug companies name. Gee, I wonder how she came across those.
When I was 9 my grandmother gave me a little tube full of knee high nylons in neutral colors. BLARGH
That reminds me of one of the worse gifts I’ve seen someone else get.
My SIL works at a hospital, and over the years has supplied the family with samples of various meds that are given out by the drug company reps. A few years ago my FIL was in need of new remedy for a problem he was having. The insurance wouldn’t pay for it because it was still expermental, and it cost a fortune. So my MIL asked their son’s wife if she could get him a few samples, and also asked her not to tell anyone because FIL was embarrassed by it. Well, SIL came through with flying colors, and was able to get a whole years supply.
On Christmas that year, she gave FIL a tie she had gotten from the drug rep, with the name of their most popular product, which was also the same product she had been supplying him with, VIAGRA!
One year, when I was about 10 (Which would have made my little sister 7 years old, this is important.), I got a personal alarm. You know, one of the things that you carry on you, and then pull the pin/push the button if you are attacked or in danger?
I was 10. No one was going to attack me.
I lived way out in the country, not in the middle of a crime-ridden city. I mean, seriously, out in the country. Our neighbors were 1/2 mile away on either side. No one would have heard the alarm if I had set it off.
She gave my little sister a folding travel alarm clock. She’s 7. She didn’t travel. If she did, I don’t think she was worried about the time. I have no idea what made her decide these were good gifts for kids.
Once, in a gift exchange at work, I ended up with one of those cheesy carnival-type posters in the gold frames. It was an ocean scene, with a dolphin jumping out of a wave, and a unicorn jumping alongside it. What the hell?
Once, when I was about 13 or so, my dad decided that it would be a good idea to drive us 6 hours (to where his side of the family lived) for christmas. My mom didn’t know that we were going, and they didn’t know we were coming, which was pretty obvious when we woke up at my cousin’s house and they had tons of toys and cool gifts, and then, near the stairs, were three little piles, each containing a bottle of generic lotion, a bag of M&Ms and a toothbrush. It was nice, though, that grandma actually went out and got us something, so I wasn’t really upset about it.
You know, I had completely forgotten I had posted on this thread…
but anyhoo, thanks to those who sympathized with me for getting the entirely depressing gift of luggage. I know my mom meant well, and it was something that I needed…just not something that I needed wrapped all nice and purdy under the tree.
Here’s a twist - during one of her angry spells my MIL gave back every gift we’d ever given her. Things I’d picked out carefully over the course of 15 years.
When I was 17 I received a luggage set for Christmas and an envelope. I had been saving to go to Mexico on spring break and in the envelope was a card that said my vacation package had been paid in full! So sometimes luaggage rocks!
I think I was 9; somewhere around there, anyway. My mom and I were at her sister’s house on Xmas Eve. They open their presents on the Eve, and there are five kids. And, as will become obvious, my aunt really has no use for me.
So they start opening their stuff. Of course, my mom can’t be arsed to bring something for me to open so I don’t just have to sit there, but what really put me in the holiday spirit was my cousin James telling me that there was nothing under the tree for me because I wasn’t part of the family.
So I go and sit on the basement steps and cry.
After a while, the door opens and James hands me a flat package without a word, then closes the door again. “Oh, how nice,” I think, drying my tears. “They did get me something!” I open it to reveal…
…stationery.
Now, I’m not saying that stationery is automatically a bad present. I had another aunt who actually liked me, who gave me stationery more than once, but it always had an interesting theme (like one time, a cartoon character was fumbling with a bunch of colored sticks over the slogan “Dropping a few lines…”).
But this is dime-store stationery. Yellow, with some kind of generic floral pattern. And what I’ll never know is whether this was a planned gift, or if my aunt rummaged it up simply because I was “in a snit” and had to be given something “to shut me up”.
It’s okay, though. This will eventually be worked into a later installment of my series. And I should emphasize that it’s not like I thought I was entitled to a new bike or something; it was the “you’re not part of the family” that was the sucker-punch.
I was a sophomore or junior in high school, so this was either 1969 or 1970-ish. I saw a package for me and the carrying handle was clearly visible. I thought it was the portable record player I’d been wanting for years. It was a suitcase. I was a brat about it and I made my mother cry that Christmas. She gave me the receipt so I could return it, and that made me feel even worse.
My senior year, the a capella choir went to Rome for a choral competition. That suitcase came in mighty handy. In fact, I bought a few matching pieces and used them for years. I’m so ashamed.
But the really bad Christmas was the one where my mom forgot about me. A few days before, she showed me some scarves she’s bought as “just-in-case” gifts - if someone showed up with something for her unexpectedly. Then comes Christmas morning. My sibs are opening boxes. And opening boxes. And opening boxes. I think I’d gotten 2 or 3 little things. Suddenly Mom handed me a package I recognized. I got the blue just-in-case scarf. That really hurt, but I wasn’t as bratty about it as I had been about the luggage.
My family isn’t religious. I can’t even say that we celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. We don’t even use it as an excuse to buy each other presents. When I was little, my parents bought me toys. Then when I got to my teens, it turned into cash (usually $20) which was thoughtless, but at least useful. For some unknown reason, this year, they decided to do away with the cash and get a real present and wrap it and gave it to me.
As thoughtless as cash is, I would much rather have that than some crappy present I will never ever use. Six pairs of earings and two necklaces in some sort of tin box. It’s made of the cheap metal, painted (?) silver. An attempt to be classy, but it’s not. It would have been nice if I had a use for it, but I don’t. I haven’t worn earings since grade seven. I also don’t wear necklaces much. I hate the way it feels around my neck, like it’s choking me. That said, I wear tons of bracelets, but they’re usually studded and crazy. None of the attempt to be classy/silver stuff. Just… I guess punk styled since now they’re what it’s known as now. Now, not only was this gift completely way off base, my parents left the price tag on, and it was orignally $19.95, but the original price is crossed out with a red pen, and written next to it is the sale price of $4.95.
I still haven’t quite forgiven my mom for this one (not my dad, either, but he died ten years ago) even though the horrible part only lasted a few minutes.
I was six, and I had been DYING for a bike. So what’s in one of the presents I open? A bike chain. Just a chain. I completely fell apart, since I didn’t have a bike to USE it with and to silly six-year-old me this was rubbing salt in a very open wound.
I strongly suspect my parents were stifling hysterical laughter at this point, and my dad went to the garage and came back with a pink banana-seat bike. I totally, completely, fell for their evil game.
