Worst Christmas gift of all time

Not Christmas, but my mom wanted to send me grapefruit from CA. I told we had grapefruit in Illinois, she didn’t need to send some halfway across the country. She thought this was very ungrateful of me, because these were going to be CALIFORNIA grapefruits. Mom? Grapefruits in Illinois are from California, too!

To hear my mom, it’s like we’re living in shacks without running water, I swear to god. I could start a whole thread on my mom’s hilarious misconceptions of the Midwest.

Hoo boy, thanks for inducing this flashback, I’d totally forgotten.

The year is maybe 1976. I’m 21, into heavy rock (Black Sabbath, Led Zep, the whole deal), I have long hair, a beard, and dress exclusively in ripped denim and t-shirts. My clueless aunt ( then about 60) knows I like “modern” music so gives me the rockin’est, funkiest thing she can find in the local record store in her exclusive suburb. I can still see it to this day, seared onto my retinas.

It’s **James Last **Trumpet A GoGo. But not the heavy-hitting original album. No. Trumpet A GoGo Volume 3.

I picked it up by the corner between two fingers, like you might hold a dead rat by the tail. Somehow I managed to keep my peace, I think my tongue was having a seizure.

Not that I can boast, having given pehaps the stupidest son-to-father present in recorded history. I was certain, I was sure, this was right, this was IT. Why, I cannot imagine to this day; even at the time he was opening it I was thinking “what was I thinking?”. I don’t know if you can even buy them any more, but they’d just hit the market in Australia back then (maybe 1970) and I thought they were so cool. It was an aerosol can you could use to re-inflate a flat tyre, with some sort of foamy gunk to get you to the next garage. Lame is as lame does.

He got his revenge on my birthday a couple of weeks ago, he lumbered me with the family mathom, this dreadful abstract painting called Matter and Anti-matter, done for charity by some Indian Maharajah back in the 60s.

My family rocks. Mostly in their heads.

I hate it when people choose that “lifestyle”. :slight_smile:

Not a gift to me, but pretty bad: my dad’s brother once turned up, uninvited (as he is prone to doing) on Christmas Day — just in time for dinner of course :rolleyes: — and presented my dad with his “gift”: a bottle of motor oil, in a plastic bag. It wasn’t even the right grade (as if that would have made a difference).

He gave me and my sister a £10 note each, so we did pretty well out of it in comparision.

On other occasions he’s given my dad shirts, which were obviously the result of clearing out his own wardrobe, sporting extravagant 1970s pointed collars and lively shades of lime green and pink.

DarkPrince’s story is pretty unbeatable, though.

Not a Christmas present but when I graduated high school the guy I was dating gave me a box of Twinkies as a present. :confused: He claimed I made a comment once that I liked Twinkies and that is why he got them for me. They were wrapped in congratulations wrapping paper with a bow. I never had any fondness for Twinkies and have not eaten one in at least 15 years.

I agree that DarkPrince’s gift was pretty bad

That cracked me up.

Is that all you got for Christmas, DarkPrince?

I’ve gotten lots of bad gifts and part of it’s my fault, I should be more gracious because at least they made the effort. by far the worst giftgiver is my dad’s wife. it’s usually some sort of arts festival thing, totally not in my style and useless to me but expensive enough I feel guilty over not appreciating them. One year it was this horrible bronze butterfly candle holder (I don’t use candles), the next year it was an artsy-craftsy salt and pepper set (I don’t use those either). But hose were inderstandle mis-steps, most people do use candles and salt and pepper, right?

The absolute worst gift she got me was a bright pink halter top in a large. One, halter’s a kind of a revealing gift to get from a parent-type figure. Two, I have worn exclusively black and grey for the last twenty years. Three, I am a fairly petite person, a full six inches shorter than my dad’s wife and not busty. There is no way I have anywhere near the bazoombas required to successfully hold up a large. :dubious:

Wow, DarkPrince, I think you do win. We all chipped in to get you a little something for first prize.

Hands DarkPrince a huge box

I hope you enjoy your bag of cornmeal, rusted doorknobs, sweater 2 sizes too small, motor oil, fruitcake with a slice missing, a couple of pinecones dipped in wax, and a handful of gravel.

Okay, so we regifted–what’s so wrong with that? :smiley:

A package of Size 11 women’s underwear (in other words, PARACHUTES). In an open package. One of the underpants had skidmarks. I was twelve. THANKS GRANDMA

Well, I was going to share the time we had a gift exchange at work and I got a soap dish, but I’ll bow instead to DarkPrince.

That gift wasn’t funny. It was intentionally cruel. I take it you and your mom aren’t on the best of terms?

One year my Dad got all the guys in the family these plastic tubes with fittings on each end that fit valve stems of tires. If you had a flat tire you could screw one end on an inflated tire, pinch off the tube and screw the other end on the flat tire.

Presumably the pressures would equal out and inflate the flat one enough to make it to a compressor and then you could inflate both to proper pressure.

I was less than enthusiastic about the whole thing but decided to just shut up and acted gratefull about such a thoughtfull gift.

Later as we were leaving to do the christmas thing at my inlaws across town,I noticed something was amiss with my truck.

Yep dad slipped out during the festivities and let the air out of one of my tires. He grinned like a possum gnawing feces as I unrolled the tube and equalized the pressure in two of my tires. Enough so that I could make it to the nearest service station to refill both with the proper air pressure.

I was mad as hell at first, but then Hey thats just Dad!

You know what Greywolf? I don’t trust you. I think you regifted, degifted, and are now using a humorous post as a springboard to a Secret Santa sex romp!

About the grapefruits- have you ever had realllly good grapefruit? If I got two of those that wouldn’t be so bad.

Texas grapefruits from the Rio Grande valley kick ass. Mmmm I bet those will be in the store soon if they aren’t already.

I once got a Red Wings calender from my brother and sister in law. I had told them on more than one occasion I didn’t like hockey. I guess they just didn’t believe me.

The worst gift given is my wife’s cousin. She’s the richest one in their family but always gives cheap gifts. And if she thinks you didn’t spend enough on her, the entire family will hear it.

She just sent all three of my kids their birthday presents. My stepson got a Freddy Got Fingered DVD. Which he already has. Plus it had a big scratch on it.

My two kids each got books. My daughter, who is in 6th grade and an excellent reader got a book entitled “My First Day at School”. It was about kindergarten. My son (5th grade) got some ghost story that he finished in about an hour. From the quality of the paper and binding, we figured they were dollar store gifts.

Now my wife would probably say the worst present she ever got was the Christmas I got her a manual can opener and a bottle of dish detergent. Hold on hold on, she also got several other presents including a $300 diamond necklace. It was just that I had been at K-mart and bought her a couple little gifts along with the aforementioned items and I thought it would be funny to wrap them and give them to her at Christmas.

I’m probably going to sounds like some kind of ungrateful, horrible child, but…on my 18th birthday (which is in July, so this is sort of the opposite of Christmas) my parents got me a diamond necklace. I had asked for a couple of CD’s and t-shirts. I am not a diamond sort of person at all. I think that diamond jewelry is kind of useless, as it costs so much and it isn’t even very unique or anything. I think I would have insisted that they return it except I knew they didn’t buy the diamond–my mom dug up a diamond ring in our yard a few years back, and they’d had it reset into the necklace. It was a lovely necklace, white gold with a “pebble bezel,” but it just wasn’t my thing. Also, they hadn’t got it insured before they gave it to me, and it still isn’t insured now, in December. I’ve never worn it. It just sits in its white leather box up in my room.

This thread just enforces my feelings on boycotting Christmas.

I can’t think of any bad Christmas gifts. Oh, I know I got some, but I’ve blocked them out.

My grandmother used to give the worst gifts. She was on social security and could not afford much, but always made it a point to get something for me and my sisters when we were older kids.

We would always get a shoebox, and inside would be something really mundane in terms of gift giving and super cheap, like under $5, if not closer to $1 or $2. One year I got pair of tubesocks and one of those ink pins that has 4 different colored inks.

We were never offended or upset as we all got good presents from other family members and were not wanting for much, but it was a source pre xmas speculation and dread/humor.

Since my grandmother has passed, we stop and remember her every xmas as we laugh at the junk we recieved. Surprising how valuable it really was.

Teachers get the weirdest cheapo gifts from kids. I once got a teal sweater from a kid whose dad worked in a sweater factory. It was exactly the kind of prettyboy thing I might be able to convince myself to wear on Christmas, maybe. I don’t think I ever did. I must have given it to a thrift store.

You get a lot of stuff that obviously came from the closeout stores and the 99 Cent Only stores. Just yesterday I got a chocolate bar that spells out “Merry Christmas” in Braille. Seriously. Who makes that?

That girl also gave me a pen that has a pair of tweezers in the back end. They have a wire going into the pen, and you play “Operation” on the pen by pulling out the little bones from the tiny holes in the wide back end of the pen. Other 9th graders thought that was one of the coolest things ever. I’d give it to them if it wouldn’t insult her, so I suppose I’ll just give it to someone next year.

I like grapefruit as much as anyone, but even amazing grapefruit would be a little battered after a 2000 mile trip. All when I can go down to TJ’s any time I like and get my own.

OOoooh! I got a good one!

Three years ago my SIL gave me a bread machine. You know, the ones you dump flour and yeast and all into, push a button, and three hours later you have a loaf of bread? The box looked a bit ‘aged’ – not tattered, just some dings and minor scratches – but it was ‘sealed shut’ with strips of that wide clear tape. Oh, and I didn’t get just the machine – she included three books of bread machine recipes.
So why is this present on a ‘bad present’ list? Well, because I’d had a bread machine in the past. For a while I used it often, but then it just sat for years and years without getting used, so I’d finally gotten my act together and donated it to the church garage sale. Along with three books of recipes…

Yep. Not only did SIL give me a garage sale discard, but something I myself had discarded!

As she’d have known if she’d ever bothered to look at the books: they were FULL of my handwritten modifications to the recipes AND HAD ‘FROM THE LIBRARY OF STARVINGBUTSTRONG’ BOOK PLATES IN THE FRONT OF EACH.
Sheesh.

So, once I was over the initial shock, I thanked her nicely. And then I wrapped the entire lot in lovely paper and gave them to her for her next birthday. :cool:

jjimm, your brother wouldn’t happen to be named Frances, would he? That’s almost exactly the plot of one of my favorite children’s books, A Birthday for Frances . Frances buys her sister a Chompo bar and several gumballs, but eats all the gumballs and squeezes that Chompo bar until she just has to eat it too. I hadn’t thought of that book in years; thanks for the reminder!

My worst Christmas gifts have all come from my great aunt, who is very wise and practical but just a tad bit frugal. One year she gave me a pretty little gift bag containing a half-empty bottle of windshield de-icer. Another year, there was a single gift addressed to my brother and me, together: it was a three-pack of Brut soap from the dollar store.

But the best one (although devastating at the time) was the year she handed me an envelope, clearly containing a card. “Don’t spend it all in one place!” she cautioned me. My 8-year old self was dying to know how much cash was inside, but mama taught me well and I waited until we were in the car on the way home to tear into it. Inside was…a card. And no money. Don’t worry, Auntie, I didn’t spend it all in one place. :rolleyes:

Maisy