Now, what are Tim Tams?
This is the most depressing thread I’ve ever read. You all have ruined MY Christmas! 
Only kidding. If anything, I’m now more grateful I never got anything quite so thoughtless or crappy – except on one particular Christmas when I was about 15, when my parents gave me nothing but tools. The first gift they had me open was a tool box, and every subsequent gift was a tool to put in it. I had to keep feigning enthusiasm and gratitude: “Ooh a hammer, cool!” :rolleyes: Lord, I was miserable. I can’t imagine they were thinking. I was never handy and had never shown any interest in being so. WTF does a gay kid want with a bunch of tools? Evidently they had mistaken me for a lesbian. Either that or they were trying to “straighten me out,” but they’re really not that kind of people at all. I guess I was growing up and they thought a man should have a tool box.
But that Christmas was an aberration in a liftime of generally happy ones. My mother would always wrap things like deodorant and shower gel and give them as gifts, but only because she wanted there to be LOTS of presents under the tree. She meant well, and there were always good gifts mixed in, so I didn’t mind.
I think this should hit the top 5 - certainly the weirdest present we ever got. Christmas 1984 my sister bought us a fireblanket as a ‘family’ present.
Up until then she sent us Christian books, as we didn’t believe in God. In 1984 we started practicing Buddhism. All year she had gone on and on about how we were going to burn in hell fire, so when we got the fireblanket for Xmas we thought it was a symbolic gift and another way for her to get her message across.
One year my brother gave me a coffee cup that had a ceramic eyeball on top of a column coming up from the center of the inside of the cup.
When in use, it appears that you have an eyeball floating in your coffee. Heh.
I might have a runner-up. I’m not sure. I was about fourteen, and Granny, who lived in Florida, kept mentioning in our phone conversations the grasshoppers that were everywhere that year. I’m sure I mumbled something like “wow, that sounds kind of neat except for the wanton destruction they’re wreaking on your garden!” because there’s just no other way to explain this that doesn’t involve my grandmother being insane.
When I opened my gift that year, I almost jumped across the room. It was a 4" x 4" x 4" box with cotton wadding, and two dead grasshoppers (each about the size of a jumbo shrimp) that she had lovingly captured, smothered with rubbing alcohol to gas them to death, and then lacquered with clear nail polish so their exoskeletons retained that shiny look.
Yes, two dead grasshoppers. Lacquered.
one time I got a stack of my great grandmother’s old issues of weekly world news, which was pretty much how her idea of the world outside of her house. it was pretty strange until I read them and realized that they were probably to the most entertaining gift I’ve ever received.
My in-laws are lovely people. Really, they are, and I’m grateful to have in-laws who are pretty easy to get along with, but I wish they wouldn’t spend money on gifts for us. They have no money, and we don’t need presents that badly anyway. But last year was the worst, because my MIL was working at our church’s equivalent of the Goodwill store, which means that she constantly saw things that didn’t cost much (though more than I wanted her to spend on us) and that she could give people. Especially her grandkids. And the stuff we got was really random sometimes.
But my Christmas present last year kind of took the cake, as far as presents for me go. It was a necklace, but not just any necklace. It was a long chain of gold-colored links, with a large 2.5" striped polished stone of gold and brown–probably a tiger’s eye. The stone is set in a large group of gold stumps, which looks like nothing so much as the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. Ugliest thing I’ve ever seen–it immediately became a princess necklace for my little girl.
My grandmother gave my mother the [http://www.bettersex.com/catalog_name=sinclair/category_name=vibe_staff/product_id=1384/cookie_test=1/product.htm]Hitachi](http://www.bettersex.com/transfer.asp?404;[url) Wand I have no idea if she knew what she was giving her (I suspect now she did) but I always assumed it was just a back/shoulder massager.
Fast-forward 10 years and I’m watching Real Sex on HBO. “OH MY GOD! They’re using my mom’s shoulder massager as a vibrator!”
My husband thought it was hilarious.
Oh groan that reminds me of the year my boyfriend got me a vibrator and a T-shirt that said “My dolly has drugs and a knife.”
So whenever any family member asked me “What did Dave get you for Christmas?” I had to say “a T-shirt,” which was very embarrassing. Especially if they said “What kind of T-shirt?” Mind you, I bought him an XTC box set that year. Later I found out that he had his previous girlfriend pick out the vibrator for me, and that he was probably cheating on me with her. That was a merry fucking Christmas. I still hate that SOB.
Bwhahahahahaha! At least I wasn’t drinking this time.
Damn. You win.
Hey, I got one of those for christmas two years ago - maybe they’re in fashion on some distant planet far, far away. I ditched mine in a charity shop.
Waitjustafreakingsecond. My MIL, you realize, picked the thing up in a charity shop. And I got it last Christmas. Hrm.
My in-laws–they’re great, but they have no taste whatsoever. Just none. Oh well, gotta love 'em.
I guess it might have taken a year for it to travel in and out of charity shops between Belfast and Chicago. On the other hand, the planet might be flooded with these tasteless objects which are given as pressies only to go straight to the nearest charity shop. A shocking thought!
Well, I still vote for the used nostril-hair trimmer as first runner up. Maybe laquered grasshoppers can be second runner up.
Nips candies aren’t so bad. That’s all my dog, Nipper can afford to give for gifts. He gives those and a box of Cheese Nips to everyone in the family. His income comes from “mining” the couch for loose change.
I had another package from my grandparents waiting for me tonight when I got home. With shaking fingers, I opened it. A wrapped book. How bad could it be? I like books, afterall.
It is The Comic Book Bible, for ages 8-12, to teach them the Word of God. I’m a 22 year old atheist, ex-Mormon who paid her dues in Sunday School and Seminary. I’m fully aware of what’s in the Bible. Furthermore, my grandparents are not even religious! At all! The church would fall down around their alcoholic heads should they ever darken its doorstep.
What I can’t wrap my mind around is that they paid to ship this thing from Utah to California. They bought it, went to the postoffice, put it in a special envelope, addressed it, bought a million staps, and mailed it. I just don’t understand.
One year when I was probably 12 or 13, my grandmother gave me a plastic smiley face. Around 12 inches in diameter. It was strangely made, like melted plastic s’s. A giant round garish yellow smiley face.
I think it was a wall hanging or something, I wasn’t sure.
Nope, I’m afraid I still have to vote for the used parachute underwear for ‘Worst’ although I suppose there is no worse gift than the one you get.