What is the worst Christmas present you ever received?

[Newdad19]

In the spirit of helping others prevent the same mistakes... what is the worst Christmas present you ever received?

Mines has to be the sculpted hand photo frame I received one year... that looked like someone's decapitated hand that held a photo for you in its palm

A 3 foot tall Darth Vader in a work Secret Santa

My mil has never given me anything new. Sometimes she gives me something that was free to her . The list is long but a few standouts include
The free soup recipes booklet she got with her soup maker. ( she didn’t give me the actual soup maker ). It was nicely wrapped.
An empty make up wallet from este Lauder, the kind of freebie you get when making a bigger purchase. . It still had the paper insert inside telling me all about the make up she removed from it first. Again nicely wrapped.
A broken necklace. It fell apart in front of us both as I put it over my head seconds after I opened it.
A hand knitted green “neck cuff” her Neighbor knitted. I’ve no idea what it is really .

I look forward to them now. I think I would be disappointed if she started actually buying my gifts.

My MIL insists on making things, mainly embroidered crap on a machine she got a few years ago. Every year without fail she makes god awful 'hand bags' for me.... with my name on 😳, I also once got a peg bag, yes, with my name on, because I'm a 1940's housewife...not one of us escape these wonderful delights, she also insists on buying things, like bottle openers, or cheap wallets for my husband, you've guessed it, with his name on. When we got married she bought us a beautiful set of towels from John Lewis then ruined them by embroidering it with, you've guessed it, our names on! Not small either, the full size of the sodding towels!! Can't wait for this years offering, and we can't even give it to charity!

In laws were forever asking dh what he wanted one year, He never specified anything and they kept asking. Christmas Day arrived and what did he get ? A torch 😂 it did come in handy during power cuts lol

One year, Mil, asked me for a wrought iron plate holder, or holders.
I asked her to describe it to me several times, and coloured wrought iron items were popular at the time.

I scoured several towns and department stores, for this thing to store plates, eventually giving up and buying a verdigris green coloured, italian styled metal three tier plate rack, with possibly a couple of subtle vine leaves on it.

I just couldn’t find a wrought iron plate rack , other than a draining board one.

I still remember her startled look when she opened it, as I explained that I’d hunted high and low for it, and how it had been very hard to find, ( it was also fairly expensive, and large)
I did wonder why on earth she wanted one to store her plates on

15 or 16 years later, I suddenly realised , and it came to me as a jolt of realisation, that she had actually meant a wrought iron display rack, to show off her decorative plates.
Like the ones she had on her walls, but she wanted these for table displays to stand the plates upright

Not a plate rack, 3 tiered shelf to store them on

I felt a cold hard shock at the realisation, before dying with laughter.

That poor woman , no wonder she looked so startled., when confronted with my huge Green, Italian style, decorated three tier metal plate rack

And my dopey husband, he hadn’t realised either.

Oh the shame

Someone sponsored a dog for me, thought it was a joke, really .. would have preferred a cheap bottle of wine. Don’t like dogs but now I get sent mail updates about what Rex has been up to

Boyfriend before I met DH (I met DH on the rebound!) gave me - nothing for Christmas. he said he thought it would 'only encourage me' whatever that meant.

Still took me quite some time before I saw the light and he had to dump me first.

DH and I were each other's rebound relationships (his wife had just left him) and we have now been together nearly 20 years! very happy too. :)

Many eons ago, when I was 18, my ex boyfriend (as in he was already my ex at this time) turned up at my house, unannounced, having not spoken to me since he dumped me, which was almost a year earlier. He greeted me enthusiastically with a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, and then handed me a Beatles CD and said "Happy Christmas beautiful, this is for you. I know how much you love the Beatles!". I had literally never mentioned The Beatles to him, ever. I have no interest in them. He then hung around at the door for a few minutes making awkward small talk and waiting for me to invite him in, which I did not. Eventually I just said "right then... I'd best get back to my parents... see you" He looked very rejected and went home. I then found out that he had told a load of our old school mates that we had just gotten back together. I corrected them. I never heard from him again.

Perhaps doesn't count as the "worst" present, but it was definitely the weirdest!

I once got a thai food cookbook, funny because I can't cook and I'm the most plain food eater you'll ever ever meet. We regularly get strange presents from my uncle, but I know they're picked with care from charity sales of work to help people (ie he'll buy the thing others dont buy for about 20 quid per item) and after the initial knee jerk reaction I realised the items were actually in his taste and now they get pride of place in the house!

tasterthemeat I was waiting for a different ending! That is so surreal!!!!

The parents of one of my school friends used to wrap up stuff from her room which they thought she had forgotten about and give it to her for Christmas.

The weird thing was that they were very generous in other ways... lots of pocket money, nice clothes etc.

@TheLightSideOfTheMoon

As a child I got a lot of crafty kits and sticker books and such.

Nice presents. But my control freak parents never let me do them.

The kits they would do for me, I’d have to sit and watch. And the stickers were never allowed to be used, they had to stay in the sticker books.

So basically they were not presents I could use. Disappointing.

Oh my god, this is one of the saddest things I've ever read. They wouldn't let you do the craft or use the stickers??!! That is very strange and also must have been so disappointing for you!

My ex's family were past masters at shite presents.

MIL once gave us a plastic pretend carriage clock, that looked like it might have been a free gift from Reader's Digest. Another triumph was a set of 6 table mats with hunting scenes on, except there were only 5 and 2 of the scenes were duplicated.

One of the SIL's had clearly inherited the "naff present" gene. She once gave us a fleece blanket with a cartoon giraffe on it. It was a weird size, bigger than a cot blanket but too small for a single bed. We tried to re-purpose it as a dog blanket, but the dogs rejected it and kicked it out of their beds. I like to think this was on the grounds of tast, but I suspect it made them too hot.

Another SIL gave us a gift of a basket containing a half-bottle of port, some Stilton and some crackers. Perfectly nice gift, in the normal run of things, but it had obviously been wrapped up and left in a warm place for some time. The Stilton had half-melted and everything under the shrink wrap was covered in vile-smelling, rancid grease. I practically boked at the smell.

An empty make up wallet from este Lauder, the kind of freebie you get when making a bigger purchase. . It still had the paper insert inside telling me all about the make up she removed from it first.

I would have been tempted to start reading the leaflet aloud, oohing and aahing about the products mentioned and rattling the empty bag as though they might appear.

A bottle of aldi baileys. I was 8 months pregnant. With twins. My parents gave it to me.

MIL bought my husband hand sanitiser last year. He works for the NHS and has free bottles on tap from work! He was really upset 😩

She is a terrible gift purchaser, she's bought him ladies size socks and smart shirts for work with massive collars because they are cheap!

@UndertheCedartree

My parents had someone paint from a photo of my DC and their cousin. It was awful. Didn't look like them - in fact to me it looked like they were dead it gave me the creeps. My DB thought the same so it wasn't just me!

Oh this reminds me. My in laws did similar. Those "paintings" are somewhere in the attic. Thank God they dont visit often and appear to have forgotten they gave soooooo many to us. But for OP my worst ever present was a kettle. Not even a really nice really expensive kettle. Just the kind you buy for less than a tenner in Tesco. A no brand cheapest ever kettle. Why you ask, cos mine was leaking (and I was skint as skint could be) also nothing else, only the kettle. From a now ex boyfriend.

@nancydrew

A vibrating foot massaging giant slipper that you put both feet into. I was 30 years old, I don’t think I was the target demographic. It was returned to the shop by my then boyfriend. All my friends laughed.

My friend was given a packet of pegs and some dishwasher tablets by either her mum or grandma

I bloody love the sound of that massaging foot slipper!!

Some funny ones on here 🤣

Mine was a secret santa through work so granted we didn't know each other well but I couldn't believe what I opened.

A pair of fluffy open toe pink slippers in an adult size 8. I am sure anyone looking at me would realise there is no way on earth, I have size 8 feet (size 4 to be precise).

To go with these slippers, I opened a nighty, a long sleeved, down to the floor floral patterned nighty, it looked like something my granny would wear, I was 21. It was a size 16, at the time, I was a size 8. 🙄

Yes, just the straps. The kind you use with a bra with detachable straps, but no bra!

I’d email them one more time and say if you really can’t be squeezed in then you will of course be cancelling. Start looking for something else in the meantime.

Yes, do this! They are being ridiculous, and I'm not sure why. They can certainly accommodate one extra person, and if they choose not to do so you would be better off elsewhere.

Sorry wrong thread!

A credit card holder.

I have a twin sister. Usually family members give us the same presents (because they lack imagination and see us as the same person including our parents). About 10 years ago, my sister was sat next to me at present opening time and she had been given by my brother an Apple TV device. I was so excited! I eagerly searched out my present from him and was surprised to note that it was quite squashy. However, I proceed with anticipation to open it. I opened it to find a very average green blanket which was forever known as the ‘Apple TV blanket’.

It was quite ironic that after many years of wanting different presents and actually being acknowledged as an individual that when it did happen, I came off decidedly less well in the exchange and I was quite miffed. I then realised why, as identical twins, people had always got us identical presents.

Works secret santa. A pack of bungee cords and some minky cleaning cloths.

It was from my boss so I had to pretend to be pleased for ever more. (To be fair my husband found the bungee cords useful).