The worst present you have ever received at Christmas

[marriedinwhiteisback]

Prompted by the Christmas wish list:

What was your worst Xmas Present
From whom; and
Why

Mine was a knit your own acrylic tank top and a pair of fake patent mule slippers from M&S - I was 24 (a very long time ago)

From my mum

And awful because she is incredibly stylish and it summed up her opinion of me as a mousey, boring, frump. .

Saucepans.

From DH.

3 years ago.

I nearly decapitated him.

A Dyson

From MIL

A used candle from my MIL.

Last year from my mum, Robert Dyas table mats, in a blue rose faux stained glass type design... I did really want new table mats but gosh these are ugly --and the buggers at RD wouldn't take them back without the receipt--

A half used bottle of moisturiser from my Aunt. Posh but half empty.

A bottle of dip from sil and bil. Between dh and me, and I couldn't eat it as it contained something I'm allergic to.

The year after it was a £2.99 peach coloured candle.

And no, no agreement on buying token presents

Fuschia hair dye.

I had blue hair..and I'm allergic to that particular brand.

Where is the lovely mumsnetter with the 8 yards of knicker elastic?

She always wins this outright

A bottle of whisky from my PIL that when I took it out from its cannister was only half full ...

My granny gave me a pair of washing up gloves once... They didn't even fit... All my siblings and cousins got a bar of chocolate and a tenner.

I was about 10...

I'd been dating my exh for 6 months & his mum got me that Christmas a Bride. & Groom teddy bear pair that were on a stand that played the wedding march!! .... I think she obviously saw me as daughter in law material !!

An electric blanket. It was my main present, from my parents, and I'd saved unwrapping it 'til the end, because I was expecting something else (i forget what). I was scared of them, because there used to be campaigns about people being burnt to death as they slept, having forgotten to turn them off.

I was about nine. I didn't what to seem ungrateful, but I remember silent tears of disappointment.

Needless to say, it was never used.

From my Mum - a box of tights and a fluffy green frog note pad (it was dire) for some strange reason my Mum thought I liked frogs!

An embroidered apron rather like this ....
thinkingthreads.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/img_6153.jpg
when I was a 23 year old festival goer

either that or a set of books I already owned but that had been stored at the gifters house

or the little cushion that fitted no chair at all

or the crockery that had been left to me a year before

and many more
all from the same person

A pair of (unmatching) pillow cases. The same person sent us a packet of biscuits to share the following year. There was 7 of us at the time. . Tis the thought that counts, right?

DH once got a pair of M&S jeans in the wrong size from the factory shop, a free umbrella, sellotape, and one walking pole from PIL . The jeans were coincidentally in FIL's size so he took them himself, they "borrowed" the umbrella to walk to the car with on the way home and never returned it, the walking pole was tiny (DH is tall) and they need to be in pairs anyway, plus he doesn't hike (bad knees).

Still using the sellotape though

A leather bomber jacket.

I was 12 and had been going on and on about a computer. My mother had hinted that I was getting it. I will never forget opening my present and being unable to contain my absolute horror. I still feel a little guilty but I also think that there was so little thought into my actual present that she did deserve it. It was hideous but it cost £300 so pretty much the same as any computer I would have wanted. She is still crap at presents.

A mini fire extinguisher from my H.

He became my ex-H 4 days later. Not entirely unrelated.

Some people need to stick to giving gift vouchers.

Think I must have been lucky over the years. My worst was a leopard print thong that I unwrapped in front of my Dps and DGPs, embarrassed doesn't come into it, I was about 12 at the time and it was from my cousins new wife.

My DAuntie once gave a cousin a raw chicken in a carrier bag...

My first Christmas with my boyfriend, I bought him a Kindle. He bought me garish fleece PJ bottoms and a hat shaped like a panda. I was devastated - not because I wanted something expensive but because it felt to me like he was saying we were a joke because he bought me a joke present.

It turns out he did it because he didn't want me to realise he was going to propose to me once we got back to his home country. Now we're married!

You say that ladymary but a few years ago my now (thankfully) exh gave me £100 of Tesco vouchers. I did not appreciate these particularly. Even less so when I discovered the receipt for a silver necklace in his wallet a few days later for his OW...

Mil likes to waste her money buy "Joke" presents - she loves Hawkins Bazaar. One wear she gave us a bottle of wine trussed up in one of those puzzle things that you have to solve in order to open the bottle. After opening the present I put it down; DS picked it up to look and the puzzle bit just fell off!
Thing is what do you do with it afterwards (and they are not cheap she could have given us more wine!!)

Aged 14, a skinny size 8 with a totally flat stomach, I was the recipient of a pair of size 16 stomach control knickers from my Grandmother. Pre -worn. She didn't find them comfortable herself, but thought they might be more hygienic than the thongs she suspected me of wearing. She explained this in front of the ENTIRE family.

a perfume set which i allways buy myself with the general shopping last year from dh super unimpressed but now i never think of xmas as for me or dh just think of the kids