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 boyfriend once bought me Winnie the Pooh baby toy. It was one that you squeezed or pushed down and it bounced around and made a giggling noise. I was 24 years old and completely baffled as to why he bought it for me. It wasn’t even cute. His thinking was based on the fact that I had a favourite mug from my childhood that had one of the traditional Winnie the Pooh illustrations on it. It was a big miss!

I was also reminded recently about the time I asked my DH for a specific book for Christmas. It was the third Bridget Jones book which was released several years after the other row. I was so excited and couldn’t wait to read it as I just loved the other two. Anyway, at the time I’d just had DC2 and DC1 was a toddler and my DH took the decision that I didn’t really have time for reading so instead bought me a book on identifying trees to take on my daily walks with the DC! I cannot tell you how disappointing it was to open a present I knew was a book, feeling the excitement that I was going to get the book I wanted…the ONLY thing I’d asked for and then finding a book on trees because apparently I was ‘too busy’ read 😢 I was gutted because I would have asked someone else to get it for me if I’d known he was going to ignore my one request!

Some of these are hilarious and sad TheLightSideOfTheMoon.

Mine was a non working cement mixer.

I met my now husband when I was 18- he was older- and many presents were subtle digs at my age. Our first Christmas together, his Grandmother gave me a packet of L plates (I was on my second car, so clearly didn't need them) and his mother got me a multi-pack of strawberry patterned knickers and an Avon starter make-up kit.

The worst by far was when my MIL gave us a massive hamper of baby clothes, nappies, etc on Christmas day in front of our entire extended families. I had a miscarriage that October and she knew very well, but thought we'd want to pretend everything was "still going ahead as planned" (her exact words)

An extension lead from “D”H

@RussianSpy101

A fucking dairylea dunker!

Also got 1 bottle of Avon’s lavender bubble bath for my 30th.

From the same relative. I’d take offence but the rest of the family get equally shitty gifts.
My DSis got a multipack of Mars bars for her last birthday.

That is so funny…..😂😂

@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.

Your parents!!

A maternity dress when I wasn't pregnant!

A juicer from DH. I was heavily pregnant, and thrilled to find a large, unexpected box under the tree. Then…a fucking juicer. I have never, ever, expressed any interest in juice, juicers or juice-related appliances.

A mildly raunchy after-dinner game in a work Secret Santa.

I sold it, still shrink-wrapped, at a car boot sale for 50p to a teenager who said it was for his mum. Bet she was thrilled.

Wind chimes.
Dove bath stuff that gave me gives from the strong smell.

...hives..

Towels from my MIL, and one year a quilted housecoat. She was lovely and I loved her dearly, but she had no idea! They eventually ended up giving us money to buy what we wanted. Also a vile punchbowl from my DM, and she kept asking us if we'd used it yet. On the other hand she did give me a lovely Dartington glass candle holder one year, and DH a really nice Dartington beer glass.

@Harlequin1088

My Mum has this awful habit of doing her Christmas shopping in whatever shop she happens to find herself in on Christmas Eve.

One year, it was Halfords. On Christmas morning, I opened an ice scraper, a car air freshener, and an AA Road Map of Great Britain.

I was 14.

No way! Was she drunk?

A book on 100 ways to eat horse - I’m vegan and had also just lost two of my horses that Christmas.

I want to adopt so many of you

A copy of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's "Love your leftovers" cookbook. From my not-as-soon-as-I'd-hoped-to-be-XH.

I'd found out a couple of weeks before that he was cheating on me with a woman in her 20s. I hadn't said anything as I was busy getting my ducks in a row. I had to open this nasty present in front of the in laws after having cooked the full works for them all with not even an offer of help or thanks. Awful awful day.

I buy my own presents these days 😁

One Christmas, DP was working away in the UAE and I was pregnant with DS. DS was a surprise baby, we’d been together for about 10 months, really informally for over half of that, before he was conceived and DP really had been quite keen for me to have an abortion.

Anyway, I had Christmas Day at my mothers that year, for the first year in a decade, and opened a beautiful watch from DP. Expensive, too.

It meant a lot at the time, but a few months later he left his diary open and I thought it was something else. Literally open at the page where he wrote about how it was either break up with me and disappear or buy a decent gift and make an effort. Obviously he did the latter but it really soured the gift and I never wore it.

The electric can opener wasn't a highlight.

My ex-husband used to buy me random perfume ever year. He just picked whatever was new, never a thought about what I would like.

He surpassed himself with tickets to a musical for my 30th. He enjoyed it, I realised I needed to leave.

My mother gave me a second hand well worn sofa with a large curry stain on it. It had belonged to my sister but her partner spilled the curry on it and according to my sister and mother “ it was only fit for the bin”. So she gave it to me.

Another choice gift was a white work uniform blouse of my sister’s. It was thin cheap polyester with the company logo embroidered on the breast pocket. My mother unpicked the pocket and sewed it onto a better quality cotton blouse. And gave the ( womens size 18) blouse to my 7 year old DD “for school” .

From my dad (but really my stepmother) a large wooden elephant sculpture the size of a sewing machine. I have and had no interest in elephants. I was 12.

Same year, a Hiiiidious Christmas bauble of a glittery frog prince in a dress, for my birthday..in January.

Some of these make me sad

@ItsSnowJokes

A box of museli and a gift tin of vaseline from my then soon to be ex husband. We were still living together to make it OK at Christmas for the children but he had to be bitter and twisted. Made me realise I was making the right decision.

In very similar circumstances, I got a bottle of shower gel and a pair of socks. To add insult to injury, I'd still got my ex a thoughtful and moderately expensive gift so as not to announce to the wider family that we were splitting up via the medium of shitty Xmas gifts 😂

My partners auntie and uncle when we got engaged sent us his and hers matching dressing gowns! 🤮

Iwas given a little box once, with about ten tiny blue pebbles in it, not a clue what you have to do with them. unless they were some kind of mystic things,, but was just crap clutter stuff for me. So they ended up in a charity shop, for someone else to find this little box of wonderment.

I also had a jar of jam once, I don't ever eat jam. well not since the 1950 era. when my late Mum said we could sometimes have a jam butty after school.

The jam gift that I got, was easy to open, as had been opened before, and it was mouldy on top of the fruit. But the person who had given it to me. had tied a tatty red ribbon round the top, I suppose to match the jam, which may have been strawberry.

@Juniper68 She has a drink problem, yes. Consequently, my brother and I despised Christmas as children. The awful presents aside, our mother would just use the festive period as an excuse to drink herself into a stupor from dawn til dusk. The rest of the year she'd at least make a bad attempt at hiding it but Christmas meant that in her eyes she was "allowed" to down two bottles of whisky a night have a drink because "everyone else is" (they weren't).