Ahh, the true, loving, giving spirit of Christmas…makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, don’t it?
Apparently, when the woman died, the soulful, mournful death knell was “Ding dong, the witch is dead.” Even her only son wasn’t sad to see her go.
The first Christmas Master Control and I were married, his mother gave him a box full of those little motel soaps and a stick of Arm & Hammer deodorant. When he didn’t say anything right away (he was at a loss for words), she defensively said, “What? I’d love to receive a practical gift like that!” Ooookay…
Can’t…breathe… XD
I think DarkPrince’s present could only be topped by Don Corleone’s gift to Marley. And that only because, since it was Marley’s horse it really constituted regifting.
I can’t think of anything too terrible. Other than most of what my grandmother has gotten me over the years. Including (ok this is a birthday one) Snoopy earing. For my 21st birthday. Aside from the fact that this is one of those birthdays that is supposed to mark a transition to adulthood, you might think she would have noticed I’d been wearing stuff bats and crucifixes in my ears for the past 8 years. (Not that I have anything against Snoopy per se).
But I think my worst gift(s) were from my SO’s parents. Not that I expected anything from them. To put it another way I didn’t want anything from them. I’ve hardly ever spoken to them. Mostly because I’d just tell them what I think of how they treat their son. (Well, I’d tell his father that, even he does talk to his mother. Actually as far as I can tell she doesn’t talk to anyone.) So given that, it’s not like I’d be put off by some token piece of crap. No, the problem I have is the sheer VOLUME of token peices of crap. Every year they have to send big bags of crap. Huge bags of random stuff they found around the house. Usually including some of that shit doctors get from people who want to sell them drugs (yes, he has discribed his mother as the least empathetic person he has ever know and…she’s a doctor). Why bother??? Just throw it out and send a check for what you would have spent on wrapping paper!
So how many personal hygiene products did she get next year from you guys? 
Peanut brittle.
When I was about five years old, I went to a Christmas gathering held by my mom’s side of the family. It was basically every aunt, uncle, and cousin from that side of the family (and my grandparents, of course). Since I was the youngest one there, one of my uncles thought it would be “cute” if I handed out the presents. Even though I could read, I didn’t have a clue who most of the people were; I would read out the name, and Mom or Dad would point out the person. I handed out quite a stack of gifts - probably more than 20 - with assurances from various aunts and uncles that I would get my own present when I was finished. Well, I got to the last gift, and read the tag; it wasn’t my name. I dropped the gift and started sobbing. The hostess of the party came back into the room with an unwrapped (but unopened) box of peanut brittle with a gaudy bow hastily stuck on top. My name wasn’t even on the thing.
I later found out that my grandmother was absolutely furious about the incident.
I should clarify - furious at the lack of present, not at me.
Wow, Jeep’s Phoenix that’s really, really terrible. Holy shit, I hope your parents gave them hell.
Well, my most recent acquisition isn’t as horrible as some mentioned, but I think it has a place in the hall of shame.
My crazy, paranoid, anti-social, crazy, isolated, paranoid, crazy, alcoholic uncle lives in a very isolated area in Utah. Last summer when I went to visit my family, he came to my grandparent’s house and was telling us about the time he went trespassing on goverment property with a gun that (for whatever reason, I have no idea) was illegal. So the forrest rangers asked him to leave. He responded by pulling out his copy of the Constitution and reading it to them. (Insert image from Monty Python here: I’m being repressed! You see how he’s repressing me!)
I didn’t say anything about it at the time. So this year, too excited by the prospect of horrible gifts to wait, I opened the package my grandparents sent me. It included a copy of the Constitution from my uncle. Printed from an Internet site. That he made my little sister print and used up all her ink in the process (he wanted a really “nice” cover you see), which he then didn’t compensate her for.
I will treasure my poor quality copy of the U.S. Constitution for the rest of my life.
harmless that story haunted me all afternoon. First time anything on the SDMB has actually made me cry. I’m glad to hear you (and your family) have moved on.
I love the nice fabric framed clothes hamper my mom bought me for my birthday a while back. It’s something I wouldn’t have bought for myself (I had some ratty laundry bags) but has ended up being really useful. You never know…
Did your grandparents get you anything?
Oh yes…we always had Christmas Day lunch with them, and that’s when the family gifts were opened. One of the big things I got that year was a doll and cradle set. For some reason though, I started liking stuffed animals more than dolls; the doll provided room decoration while my stuffed animals “slept” in the cradle. My grandmother was also very cool about clothes; she and my mom would take me clothes shopping well before Christmas, and my grandmother would purchase several outfits for me then rather than wrapping them up.
I have to post this on behalf of my husband…
This isn’t a Christmas gift though.
For his twenty-first birthday, he got from his sister … a half a packet of burger rings. She’d already eaten the other half :eek:
(yes, you guessed it, she’d forgotten to buy him a present. So he got what was in her hand at the time…)
Next year, he got a packet of half burger rings. As in, open the packet and cut each individual burger ring in half.
I should add at this point that my husband and his sister are actually very close, and he thinks all this is exceedingly funny.
Oh, and while I’m on the subject of food-related presents…
For our wedding, two of his cousins (again, who we actually get on very well with and who gave us a good laugh with this) got us a loaf of bread.
Their excuse was that we were bound to get at least one toaster form somewhere, then we’d have something to put in it.
We received no toaster…
It’s really just as well we’re not much fussed about material possessions
I had a female relative, who, years ago, would buy like-type presents for the ‘girls in the family’ (eg similiar and very beautiful cloisonne jewel boxes) – that is, my sister, and my two sisters-in-law. I would watch them open these lovely gifts, and not say a word – she would usually say, ‘Oh, I knew you wouldn’t like anything like that.’
:rolleyes:
The first Christmas I was away from my family (which was a very happy Christmas), my well-meaning but daft mum sent me a package filled with lots of festively wrapped boxes and packets – I was extremely surprised, as she stopped giving me anything when I was about 12. They were, she said, to brighten up my flat since I was alone for the holidays. I was livid to discover they were just boxes of tissue and empty food boxes, like pasta – they were meant literally just to be decoration.
(The ‘no present’ thing is very strange; because I was the bookish one in the family, they seemed to get it into their heads that I had no interest in gifts, or, as this female rellie above put it, that I was ‘intellectually beyond’ presents. Hmmm…still haven’t figured that one out as yet. And yes it was annoying to see older and younger family members receiving presents from the people who insisted that I didn’t need anything. By the way, they DID expect me to give THEM presents. Nutters, the lot of them.).
I almost feel guilty posting this, because the thought behind these gifts was at least half-ass, unlike a brick or grandma’s used underwear.
Keep in mind that even today I don’t wear ties. Back in the day it was completely unheard of. So what did my great-grandmother give me and my older brother? Ties. Ugly ones. Clip-ons. And so small, my brother’s barely fit me.
One year, my sister gave me a little Matchbox race car. It was great! In fact, I had one just like it. But I had lost the old one. Come to think of it, I lost it right around the time a mysterious gift from my sister appeared under the tree.
All was OK with that, though. That same year I gave her an original work of art. It was the word “HI!” written on a piece of scrap lumber.
At the time, I thought the following was a cruddy gift…
There was a box under my (then) in-law’s tree that was specifically to me from my father-in-law (Tom). Unusual because gifts to my (then) wife and I were usually from the both of them. He wanted this specifically to be from HIM to ME.
It was about the size of a large dictionary but about five times heavier.
He’d given me brake shoes.
I offered a polite smile and thank-you but Tom could see that, in my twenty-year-old-mind, I just didn’t get it.
You see, he’s a mechanic. Damn good one at that. He could tell just by listening to my car pull into his driveway about a week earlier that I needed brake shoes.
And he would put them on my car for me… as part of my gift.
As he finished the brake-job, with me dutifully standing behind him trying to help as best as I could, he said “There, I’ve just probably saved your life.”
I swallowed hard and squeaked out a lame “thankyousomuchandI’msorryIactedlikesuchanasswhenIopenedyourgift.”
So, in retrospect, the worst Christmas gift was received by Tom when he saw the thoughtless way I reacted when I opened his gift to me.
But, he never spoke of it again and didn’t hold it against me. I guess it was just his way of being a ‘dad’ to me.
A couple years ago before my GF and I started dating she flew out to her current BF for Christmas where he gave her a rifle. She is a pacifist and the least outdoorsy person on earth. She had never fired a gun before and never got a chance to fire that one. Since she was fllying back home she wasn’t able to take it with her. He then broke up with her by phone about a week later and kept the gun.
I am going to a regifiting party in New York around New Years. We all take the crapiest useless gifts we got in the last year, rewrap them, and randomly hand them out. The one rule is you MUST take home the crap you opened.
I think you all should come, except GrizzRitch, I don’t want you pulling the breaks off your car.
What if you didn’t get any crappy presents? Do you give up the least fantastic of your fantastic gifts? Or are you allowed to pass off a used kleenex as a gift?