I know I’ve talked about this before, but the worst gifts, plural, were the Christmas right after my first husband and I got married. We had just gotten back from our honeymoon and went to his mom’s where there was this huge pile of gifts for us.
They were all broken ceramic things from the store his mother managed (a Dollar General). I only specifically remember the angel with only one hand.
Around Christmas I’m always listening out for gifts my wife might like. One year, she kept mentioning how much she liked the Kylie Minogue song in the charts at the time. Thinking I’d done a really good thing, I went out and bought the Kylie Minogue album as one of her presents.
Cut to Christmas Eve, the song was on TV. Feeling pretty smug, I mentioned to my wife how much she liked that song. “Yes”, she replied, “but I heard the rest of the album at work and it’s rubbish”. :smack:
My sister gave me a plane ticket to come see her. Since I’d been using the excuse “I would love to but just can’t afford it” for a couple of years there was nothing I could do but go.
She’s not evil, just incredibly high maintenance to be around. It was like working 24 hrs a day for almost a week. I called in sick for 3 days after I got back because I was so emotionally depleted.
Luckily I now can use my kids as an excuse to not leave town.
My parents gave me hand-me-down clothing, including shoes, from my older brother . . . stuff I would have wound up getting anyway. He got everything new.
This is just such a great story. I am sitting here laughing. One ${animal}father’s as good as another, I suppose.
One year I got a sweatshirt with Mickey Mouse bowling on the front.
The sweatshirt was a medium and at the time I wore at least XXX. I don’t bowl. I’m not really a Mickey fan. And, since I’m always warm, I never wear sweatshirts.
Some of these are hilarious, while others are heartbreaking. To those, I’m so sorry that people can be such dicks. You’d think they’d at least try to step it up for the holidays… 
Anyway, my favorite was from a guy I’d only gone out with a few times because I felt sorry for him. He’d decided that for Christmas, he’d really try to win me over. So, what do you think he bought me? That’s right! A Glamour magazine, one cantaloupe and a two-liter bottle of Dr Pepper, all neatly presented in a grocer’s sack.
Needless to say, we never dated much beyond that.
Runner-up has to be the year my mom gave me a western style American flag shirt. Not only am I not the country girl type, but jingoistic displays are definitely not the thing of this neo-hippie. Hello yard sale!
First Christmas after marrying, my spouse, her two siblings and their spouses got beautiful sheepskin coats and jackets from my M-I-L and F-I-L. I got socks…
My grandmother tortured me about what I got for Christmas for a month. I was SO excited.
It was soap.
Oh, and there was the birthday present from hell: my mom’s blowdryer broke so she got me a blowdryer for my birthday. That I never used.
Oh, and once for Valentine’s Day my boyfriend got me a Brita water pitcher…in a Target bag. He handed it to me and said, ‘Yeah, it sucks.’
Oh dear. There was the year I desperately wanted an old-fashioned Victorian dollhouse kit and a football. I was about 11 or so. I wanted to put it together with my dad. He promised.
He bought me a dollhouse. It sat in a box…and sat…and sat.
Three months later for my birthday, the box disappeared and he replaced it with a FISHER PRICE TALKING DOLLHOUSE.
So NOT what I wanted.
Did he not understand I didn’t actually want to play with dolls? And for Pete’s sake, I was way too old for that!
Oh, and the football? My mom got me one. It said “UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII” on it. Um, yes, we lived in Hawkeye Country.
My brother once bought our mom a padlock and some batteries for Christmas. In his defense, he was a kid at the time (maybe 10 or 11).
When I was 5, I bought my mom a (cheap) bottle of nail polish at the drug store. My dad got a new plastic oil funnel for working on his car. Merry Christmas, Mom & Dad! 
They both did a great job of pretending to absolutely love their presents, to their credit.
An ex-boyfriend of mine once gave me a pretty hair barrette for Christmas. It had polished rocks hot glued across it for decoration. It was heavy as hell (the rocks) and I have pretty thin/fine hair anyway, so every time I tried to wear it, it would snag and pull out clumps of hair as the heavy rocks weighed it down. Ouch! I hit upon the idea of clipping it onto my purse strap, since I hated not to use it at all. But the clip part broke one day, sending the rock barrette crashing to the floor, where all the little rocks immediately broke off and went bouncing all around. Ah well. But really, ROCKS on a barrette? Whose bright idea was that?
My father-in-law bought me a hairbrush for Christmas a few years ago. A few days later, he apologized for the lame gift, and presented me with my “real” gift - a fuzzy “Valentine’s Day” bathrobe about 3 sizes too small for me. After Christmas sale, I guess?
Yes, that’d be about the age I was when I bought my father a tyre repair/inflation kit. I was sure it was a brilliant choice up to about 5 seconds before he opened, then suddenly I couldn’t imagine what I’d been thinking.
Worst present to me was a book full of bad golfing jokes - I didn’t (and don’t) play golf. Oh, and a Fonzie book, called something like Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey. It was about as funny as a burning orphanage.
My excuse is that I was eight years old. I picked out a severly nylon floor-length muumuu with an even more muumuu-ey pegnoir-thing. It was made in a ‘fabric’ patterned with huge roses in every bright-pastel color in the universe.
Not only were there ruffles around the neck and front, but giant pom-pons on leashes that would swing wildly with every step. My mom was a trouper and wore it every so often, without giving the slightest hint how hideous it was.
I’ve always been an arts&crafts type of person, and so one year, when I was maybe 5 or 6, I made my mom a creche (manger scene) for Christmas. I made it all out of paper and tape; everything was 3D–it wasn’t just a cut-out shape of each animal or anything.
She opened it, looked at it for a second, and then threw it in the trash right in front of me and scolded me for giving her garbage for a gift.
That makes me so sad. What a thoughtful gift.
We still use as our centerpiece for Thanksgiving the Pilgrim boat the kids made out of a paper mache OJ carton and toilet paper roll pilgrims that go in it. The were, maybe 4 and 7? They are 13 and 16 now. It’s really cute and means so much to me.
Oh I guess I should post, lol.
The first year my husband and I were dating I he handed me my gift and immediately said “You can take it back if you want” before I even opened it. It turned out to be a gift set of stinky old lady perfume and whore red lipstick. I never wear perfume and have worn lipstick maybe twice in my life.
So we’re wandering through Macy’s and pass the display with the gift on it, amidst 100s of other perfumes and gift boxes. Curious, I asked him “What made you choose this one, exactly?” He replied “At the other Macy’s this was the closest to the door.”
My MIL has been guilty of doing crap like splitting up a package of tube socks so that my husband would get three pairs and her son-in-law got three pairs. She would also buy crap that obviously came from flea markets. Flimsy tote bags, knock off designer junk, etc.
The corker though was my husband one year got his sister Rolling Stones tickets, and SF Giants stuff for her husband. They gave us a mousepad that looked like a rug. Oh oh! I’m forgetting the decorative jar of popcorn. He worked at a movie theater for 2 decades, why oh why would you get him popcorn?
The worst for me was the year (teenage version of myself-late 90’s) I asked for two CDs; Metalica Black Album and The Beatles White Album. I received instead: Hanson (of MmmBop fame and boy band from hell) and The Cardigans.
The response from parents to my wtf look? Metalica is for those “other kids” and no comment on the Beatles. When i mentioned i didn’t like Hanson or The Cardigans my mom says “Oh well, I like them! You could give them to me.”
Why bother giving a gift that you know the recipient will not want and would not get used/ listened to unless you take it back from them. You could have saved the effot of wrapping them and put them right in her collection. And yes my mother know I did not like either of those bands or even that style of music in general. I also get that she was trying to make a point, but come ON!
Probably the person who got a rock tumbler and a hot glue gun the Christmas before.
God, my ex-husband was a HORRIBLE gift giver. Our first Christmas together, the entire time leading up to the holiday he was going on and on about how amazing and wonderful my gift was. That I was just going to LOVE it. Of course I get excited and when Christmas day finally comes and I open the gift…an electric blanket. From Japan. For tiny Japanese people. That could barely covering my legs. Ugh that was hard to pretend to be excited about.
Next year his gift to me? A package deal. A pedometer and “Walk Your Way to Weight Loss” DVD. Suckiest Christmas ever.
Used sex manuals, from my parents, with folded down pages and highlighted passages.
