Worst Christmas gifts EVER!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Mentioned in another thread by voguevixen, so here it is: what are the stupidest, crappiest, thoughtless or offensive Christmas gifts you’ve ever recieved?

My contribution: one year my parents gave me and my wife a Nurses Drug Handbook. It was 7 or 8 years outdated and had been stolen from the hospital when my mom had knee surgery. It was “wrapped” in a copy of the Sunday newspaper comics and stuffed in a Pier 1 shopping bag.
:confused:
I’m am neither a nurse nor a doctor and have no use whatsoever for a drug reference book.

2

This was not my gift, but I witnessed it. My aunt gave her grandson (my cousin) a loaf of bread and three dollars. I swear to Og.

3

My ex gave me one of those electric “back massagers” for Christmas. Did I mention this was the first Christmas he met my parents?

He was shocked, SHOCKED, that my mother and I were laughing so hard at it. It never occurred to him that it could have an alternative use.

4

An electric salad spinner. An electric SALAD SPINNER. My husband gave it to me in one of our first several Christmases together. It’s been at least 12 years, and hell if I’ve let him live it down just yet. Of all the crappy, last-minute desperation gifts … I can feel my ire rising just thinking about it.

5

I make my own jam, from my own fruit trees, and give it as Christmas gifts. One year, my dad upon receiving his jam, rushed right out and purchased a commercially made jam he thought I might like.

6

Have you ever seen those display boxes of candy? The big Russell Stover boxes that look like full boxes of candy but aren’t full of anything but air?

Yep. Got one of those one year.

7

Copied from a previous thread:

The Great Coffee Saga of '10

I started drinking coffee at an early age – maybe 12 or 13. It was an excellent way for me to indulge in copious amounts of dairy and sugar. I loved it. Eventually I learned to love it even more when it was black. Great beverage.

But as I graduated from college, I sort of grew away from it. I’d enjoy the occasional cup, but I could seriously take it or leave it. And I don’t deal well with caffeine. Eventually I stopped keeping any in the house.

My sister, a confirmed coffaholic, found this to be unacceptable. For a Christmas gift, she gave me a one-cup drip cone. She put me back on the black-cocaine. For a while. Eventually I lost the cone, and I was back to no coffee.

Many years later – two years ago, to be exact – my brother came to stay with me for a few days. He was appalled that I kept no coffee in the house. He was thrilled when we spent a night at my then-GFs house, as she was a member of the Cult of the Bean. When he left town, he also got me a cone drip thing, as well as a pound of (caffeinated) coffee.

Since then, I’ll usually make myself a cup or two on weekends. It’s a great way to wake up, and a pretty easy way to make a cup.

Last year I told my father about it, and how I need to use about 4-5 tablespoons of grounds to make one cup. He was scandalized. Engineer that he is, he immediately started coming up with ideas to make things more efficient. His ideas didn’t work so well.

Fast forward to last week. Dad was downright obsessed with my coffee-drinking “habit”, and was hell-bent on improving it.

Now when I was a kid, I loved asking my dad how things worked. I’d get him to explain gravity/electricity/gyroscopes/seasons. He’d sit me down at the kitchen table, get out a piece of paper and a pen, and draw fancy diagrams and explain – in a way I could understand – how things worked. I think I sought out those moments not just for the learning, but for the bonding. Those are some of my fondest childhood memories.

But lately dad has been on a steroid, which has made him a bit cloudy. And I was taking a break from tobacco, which made me cloudy and irritable. I wasn’t enjoying our interactions, especially when he got obsessed with a topic, namely coffee brewing. That was kind of sad.

The first morning I arrived, dad wanted to make sure that I not only had a cup for my coffee, but a double-insulated dee-lux travel mug. He didn’t want it to go cold on me, after all. Mom just rolled her eyes and handed me a standard coffee mug.

The discussion went on for two more days. On Christmas morning, dad showed me the virtues of the french press, the best coffee he knows how to make. He handed me a cup to enjoy. It was, to put it kindly, sludge. Seriously, I stuck my finger in and pulled out black paint.

I started to say that I didn’t like that, and was happy with my little drippy cone. For some reason, I didn’t say it.

A few hours later, we were exchanging gifts. Mom and dad gave me my one big present. When I saw the size of the box, I gasped. How in the hell was I going to fit that in my suitcase? I think my family forgets that any gifts that they give me must be suitcase-friendly. A big block of kitchen knives is a great gift, but it won’t fit in my suitcase, and airport security doesn’t want it in my carry-on. And yet, one year I got that.

So I opened my gift, and it was… a french press coffee maker. Great! Still wouldn’t fit in my suitcase. But it was very thoughtful.

Then I opened the gift from my sister-in-law. She didn’t know what to get me, so she asked my dad. Somehow they came up with the perfect gift for the caffeine demon that I am – a $50 gift certificate for a coffee shop. But not just any coffee shop. Not Starbucks, certainly. Nope, a local place, a place that’s 1400 miles from where I live. I had to redeem that sucker in the next few days or it was useless.

So we went there. What could I spend it on? They had a nice platter. I could use a nice platter. I had putting the Thanksgiving bird on a dinner plate. How about coffee? They had decaf, but only in drip-grind. No decaf in whole beans. The barista was really helpful. She suggested that I buy caffeinated in whole beans, and since they couldn’t grind it there, I could take it down to Publix and grind it there. Not a terribly useful suggestion, but she gave excellent direction to Publix.

I finally decided to spend my gift certificate on a grinder. That way I could grind it the way I wanted. But I still couldn’t buy decaf whole beans there.

And the grinder wouldn’t fit into my suitcase.

So off we went to another coffee shop. They sold whole beans in decaf. Great! I got three different kinds. Since the barista there couldn’t tell me what they tasted like, I picked the ones with the prettiest names. Moon Beam, Morning Wakey, and Cowboy Express, or some shit like that. It was a complete crapshoot.

The next problem to solve was the suitcase problem. Off we went to several stores that might have suitcases on sale. Dad was concerned that I should get one that had more cubic feet of interior space than I already had. Out came the tape measure, pen, notepad, and calculator. 2.2 cubic feet was not going to cut it. I finally selected one that had approximately 3000 cubic feet and 27 compartments. So what if it was bigger than my apartment? I could just live inside the suitcase! And I’d double my closet space!

I picked out a nice one, on sale. But then I found a cheaper one. Dad saw another one just like it. Except it wasn’t just like it. It was of far superior quality. Long story short (too late!), I bought the biggest, most expensive suitcase they had. I could take my coffee paraphenalia on a world tour, and have room left over for a whole fleet of dee-lux insulated travel mugs. Which I could have bought at the first coffee house. Where I had the gift certificate. Which I’d already spent.

We arrived home, me toting all sorts of stuff. When we told mom where we got the suitcase, she reminded us that she had a coupon for that. Oh well.

So the next morning I set about to make my first cup of decaf whole bean fresh ground french pressed Moon Bean deliciousness. No longer did I have to go to othe trouble of putting a cone on a cup, a filter in the cone, pre-ground coffee into the filter, and pour boiling water on the whole mess. Nope, now all I had to do was clean out the grinder, measure six scoops of whole beans into it, grind it to just the right grind, pour it into the french press, heat water to exactly 195 degrees, pour it into the press, wait precisely 4.5 minutes, stir it, press it, drink it, then clean up the mess, as well as two contraptions.

I offered some to dad.

He didn’t like it.

But I got some nice luggage out of the deal.

8

Wait, what? An empty box? Was this intentional or a mistake? Why would anyone buy such a thing? I am confused.

My contribution is the year I got a set of ceramic button covers from my stepdad’s parents. I had never before (and have never since) heard of button covers. They’re little things made to snap over the buttons on your shirt or your jacket, to make them look more…decorative, I guess. This set was made of ceramic and therefore was insanely heavy, and had a holiday theme. There was a Santa, a reindeer, etc.

That was the fastest gift-to-landfill trip I think I’ve ever seen.

9

So was my aunt. Confused, that is. Still is. We don’t exchange gifts anymore. It’s easier. And far less painful.

10

From the 2008 thread:

I got a rock.

11

I got the world’s cheapie~est Christmas ornament in a work ornament exchange. We all wrapped ours, and passed them around the table at lunch and when someone said “Stop!” you got the one you were holding. Everyone had nice fancy ornaments, the worst of which was something from the Hallmark store. In other words, all were nice, including the one I gave.

Mine was a 2-inch wooden candle. As in, a stick with a tapered end painted yellow. Glued to small square base. Thin thread attached for hanging.

I can only assume the person forgot, and saw the thing at the counter at the gas station on the way to the restaurant where we were having our Christmas lunch. I was embarrassed for whoever it was!

12

When I was ten years old, we did a pre-Christmas gift exchange with my aunt and uncle and cousins. The idea was that kids weren’t opening gifts from their parents, just from their aunt and uncle.

My cousins got toys.

I got a sweater.

Cue disappointed ten year old watching her cousins play with toys all evening.

13

When I was a kid my big brother and I got neckties from our great grandmother. Clip-ons. My brother’s almost fit me.

We never had occasions to wear ties. Ever.

14

For my high school graduation, one of the gifts I got was a $5 gift certificate to the local grocery store. A gift certificate to a grocery store is not an awful gift for someone going to college, I guess, but $5? From a family I knew could have afforded at least, say, $20?

15

If anyone is interested in killing a few hours, this Why Did You Buy Me That? is a pretty fun site.

16

Chalk it up to being a kid, but I bought a bottle of perfume that probably cost $2.00 from Woolworths and held about a half gallon of what was perhaps the most godawful concoction ever created. Even the sales lady who knew I was buying this for my mother for Christmas did everything possible to talk me out of buying it.
To mom’s credit, on Christmas morning she sprinkled about 2 drops on her arm and told me how wonderful it was, and then she took her shower. A rather long shower if I remember correctly.

17

This reminds me of a story my Dad told me. In his family there was serious favourtism towards his older brother “Bob”, to the point that nowadays would be called “emotional abuse” towards my Dad. Apparently one Christmas their Grandma (their Dad’s Mom, I believe) gave presents to the boys. It went like this: “For Bobby…for Bobby…for Bobby…for Bobby…oh, here’s one for (Dad).” It was a little tiny pocket knife. While his brother got a boatload of presents. (My Dad says he still has that pocket knife.)

18

An ex-GF’s cousins used to get silver dollars from their grandmother. But ex-GF only got a 50 cent piece. That was her punishment for not being born to a Catholic mother.

19

Whe I was 13, I got the only present I’d ever received from my mother. (she left me with my grandparents at age 8 days to “go find work”)
It was a small record player, one speed, 78rpms, and two records. One was Big Rock Candy Mountain. I don’t remember the other. This in the hayday of the 45 rpm record.

She and her new family came to visit the next summer. She was very disipointed that I wasn’t 5 years old, like she wanted me to be. I made her feel old.

20

One year my grandmother got me a Costco-sized bag of Crasins. I was a bit jealous of my sister. She got the Costco jar of mixed nuts. At least I like nuts…

Another good one was when my MiL gave me a charitable donation to HER church. I am not religious at all and certainly not a follower of her church, which I find a bit creepy and cultish.