Best and Worst Christmas Gifts

rhymegirl

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Hi everybody!

I am working on a Christmas article for the monthly publication I write for. (I don't have an okay yet from the editor but I need to have something prepared soon since the deadline is November 1st.)

So if you'd like to participate, here's my question:
What's the worst Christmas gift you ever received?
I am willing to share mine here. My parents gave me an electric can opener one year when I was single, living on my own. I looked at it and thought: Really? A can opener is a nice housewarming type of gift, but for Christmas?

If nothing stands out, what is the best Christmas gift you've received? And why?

Thank you for sharing your comments here. I will need to quote people, so please make sure you're okay with being quoted.
 

Magnanimoe

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Two bags of Cheetos, not even wrapped. But hey, at least they were the crinkly kind.

But there was also this toy airport with a hangar, parking ramp, etc. The toy was great but what made it the worst was that my brother and I had pestered my parents into letting us open one present on Christmas Eve. We had always been strictly Christmas morning kids. After opening the gift I just had this horrible guilt. Obviously I've never forgotten that.

I also remember a college professor, way back in 1985, telling us about the time he gave his young daughter a cow's head for Christmas. It was some kind of inside joke between the two but it totally backfired and she freaked. Merry Christmas!
 

Michael Davis

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Wort I every received was a fog horn from my in-laws. Only worked for a week.
 

spieles

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My mother told the story about the year (the late 1940s, I would guess) everybody gave her scented soaps, perfumes, sachets, more scented soaps...That next year she decided to bathe more often than twice a week.

Hahahaha.

My husband had back pain for a while, so my mom and step-dad wanted to help so that got him one of those back massagers. The really funny part though is that later that evening when my husband mentioned his pain was back, my mom said, "No problem. I've got the vibrator. Now get down on the floor."

Dieeeeed.
 

Maryn

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My sister used to give me passive-aggressive gifts. She is smaller than I and slender; I've always been built more like a mailbox. Every year I would send her a brief wish list and my sizes in various items. She usually got me something on the list but many, many sizes too large, i.e., I asked for a long-sleeved yellow shirt in a size 16 and I received one in a size 24.

She did the same with books once I stopped asking for clothes. Usually the title of the one I received had one of the same words as the title of the one I'd asked for.

We no longer exchange gifts.

Maryn, good with that
 

Fruitbat

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My mother-in-law gave me a stack of Christmas gifts that I recognized as the five cheapo giveaways that came with a catalogue order. Which would have been fine except that everyone else got lovely and pricey gifts, and she was catty to me anyway. Context counts.
 

alleycat

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I got a battery-powered tie rack one year. It's not the worst present I ever got but I thought it was funny. "Oh, wow! I don't have to reach that extra six inches to get my tie now. I'll just push this button until the right tie comes around." I never did use it. I finally gave it away to one of those charity organizations.
 
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kuwisdelu

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She usually got me something on the list but many, many sizes too large
...
She did the same with books

I'm imagining this:

big-book.jpg
 

alleycat

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I have a good friend who used to get confused about what she had given me in past years. She knew I liked old movies so she gave me a copy of Casablanca . . . and a copy of Casablanca . . . and (surprise!) a copy of Casablanca.
 

Marian Perera

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I went to college in the States. The first year I was back home for Christmas, my father gave me this elaborate silver-plated three-branched candleholder with shiny glass prisms dangling from it. It was large and heavy (weight limit on the airline), utterly inappropriate for a typical college student's dorm room and couldn't be used anyway because there was a no-candles policy. I gave it to my mother and she gave it away entirely.

The Story of the Christmas Bookcase (on my blog) is a tale of what might have been the best gift I'd ever received, if not for one small problem...
 
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Karen Junker

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The year I was 8, my mom and dad gave all of us kids (I had 2 younger sibs) a set of encyclopedias, as a collective (and our only) gift. I was really upset and complained bitterly, because I had asked for a transistor radio.

My mother took me aside and explained to me that my father had saved all year for those books - and he was so proud to have been able to given them to us -- because when he was a child, the only book in their home (a cabin without electricy, running water or indoor lavatory) was a bible that had been passed down from his great-grandfather. It changed the way I looked at gifts, at giving, and at my father. Pretty dang good gift.
 

KarmaPolice

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Pretty much every gift I got from my parents were crappy ones. With (very) few exceptions, they fit into the following categories:

1/ Stuff you'd have to buy your kid anyway. Clothing for school, sensible shoes, boring stationary etc.

2/ Stuff that looked okay on first glance, but turned out to have a fault which meant it had to be sent back... and it never returned. Board games and electronics were the main ones.

3/ Stuff I had wanted... several years before. At 14 I got a Scalextric, which by then I hadn't wanted since 12.

4/ ...And just sheer crap. The kind that makes you wonder if they even know what age and gender you are. Books way below my reading level or really boring ones. Several footballs, despite the fact that I had zero skill or interest in it. Music / films suitable for a 7 year-old girl. A Noddy costume when I was 12.

Needless to say, we don't get on even now. Though it wasn't personal - my siblings got similar crap too.

The best? My first PC, bought second-hand by my Nan back in '98. Wasn't that good even at the time; Pentium 1, Windows 95, 32 MB RAM. But it was all mine, and it was my first.
 

Maggie Maxwell

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Not my own, but...

If you play video games, you probably know about Gamestop and their trade-in policy. Bring in a used stuff, get a teeny amount of money for another game. I worked there for three years. A few days after Christmas, a guy comes in with a large bag and says his grandparents got him some video game stuff he has no use or space for and wondered if he could trade it in. I opened the bag... and found it full of random things we gave away with purchases and preorders. We had a drawer full of leftovers of our own we sometimes let kids raid. We had to tell the poor guy that his grandparents raided a freebies drawer at their local store for his Christmas and that we couldn't give him a penny for any of it.
 

rhymegirl

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Wow, this is going along quite well.

Thank you for all the responses so far!

I guess this is a good topic.
 

Channy

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Two years ago, my mom kinda forgot so she whipped out some tiki-inspired whicker candle holders/set.. It was pretty until I noticed something, lifted one candle and found a dead baby mouse.
 

Buffysquirrel

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One year my husband's brother and his wife gave us the liqueur chocolates they'd received the previous year from another family member. The chocs hadn't done well in the meantime. Then they told us they were no longer giving or expecting gifts. Yet last year I saw the wife posting on FB about how her gift shopping was going. Uh huh?

Apart from that, one year my parents gave me a jumper in the colour of my school uniform (bottle green). I *hated* my school uniform.
 

Fruitbat

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Oh, that reminds me. One year my father gave me a box of chocolates. When I opened it, a bunch of moths flew out. He thought it was funny to give out chocolates but open the box and eat one before he wrapped, so maybe that was how it happened. :)
 

MaryMumsy

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Gifts from my parents were always pretty good, even as an adult, although some wouldn't think so. I'm sorry, but new dish towels were on my wish list. I bought myself some new ones this year, I hadn't had any new ones since my Mom died in 2004.

My MIL, on the other hand, didn't get it. It was always something I either didn't want or didn't need. And it got worse after my BIL got married. You could see the calculator going in his wife's head as the gifts were opened. MIL countered by giving us girls exactly the same thing (if it was clothing, in different colors) and giving the guys exactly the same thing.

About 15 years ago my gift from hubby was a new toilet. But I didn't complain, we needed it. And we tend to buy things for the house, if we buy gifts at all. We get things as we need or want them.

MM
 

L M Ashton

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A pen. Yep, that exciting. From my mother, who always gave me crappy gifts when I got them, which wasn't always. That particular year, one of my brothers got a briefcase, the other a toolbox (a good one, not a crappy one), and my sister a sewing machine, all gifts well over a hundred bucks each. Mine? Yeah...
 

shakeysix

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I was the oldest grandchild of 10. My sister was next oldest. Every Thanksgiving Day, from the time I was six and started to read until I was in high school, my maternal grandmother put my sister and me in charge of Christmas shopping for our brother and our 7 little cousins.

She would hand us each a pencil and a Christmas catalog--Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck. The baby always got a Jack in the Box for his first Christmas and there was always a baby, so we picked one out, circled it. The other kids could pick up to 6 toys. The toys had to come under the budget. My sister and I circled each child's choice and of course our own choices. Then put the child's name by it. Next we added up the cost and put it on a list for Grandma so she could tell Santa what to bring. Grandma didn't buy every choice. She had final say and if something wasn't safe or practical that was that. Our great grandmother gave each of us warm pajamas, a warm hat and mittens and a box of chocolate cherries. We got to pick them too, but not tell the little kids. Getting to help was the best gift because when the kids opened their gifts we were as excited as they were.

As we got older, we put a lot of effort into keeping the Santa secret going with the little kids. Grandma and Grandpa's gifts were even better than a surprise for my sister and me, because we knew what was coming but had no idea what it was really like, just a black and white catalog picture. I remember an ant farm, a telescope, a xylophone, a camera, and best of all a microscope. I spent all that Christmas Day trying to get a snowflake under my slide!

Some Christmases there was a 5$ limit per kid, others had a $3 limit, depending on how well the wheat and alfalfa harvests had gone. Incredible as it seems, $5 could buy a decent tricycle in the early fifties. Our dad, grandfather and uncles went pheasant hunting on Thanksgiving morning so the Christmas catalog chore was a perfect way to keep ten kids busy while Grandma and Great Grandma made T-giving dinner--s6
 
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snafu1056

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The worst was just a mistake. I wanted a Star Wars book and they got me Star Trek instead. I like Star Trek too, so it wasn't that bad, but I was completely baffled when I opened it.

Also a Chia-pet, but that was a gag gift anyway.
 

Fruitbat

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My son got me some air freshener for my birthday once. He was young and trying to be thoughtful but it was hard not to laugh.