What would be the ^worst^ and most unsuitable Christmas present you could possibly receive?

[moondog]

For moi I think gift set of cheap oil 'infused' with some grass herbs along with some dried out spices and a crap mortar and pestle.

I got a basket of little pots of jam from my SIL - she knows I make all my own jam.
I believe she's done similar things to other people too, it's got a weird kind of logic I suppose - "she makes jam, she must like jam"...

DH still jokes about the step ladder I bought him for his birthday the first year we were together, at which point I remind him that he bought me a towel one Xmas!

When I unwrapped it my mum looked horrified and whispered "are you alright about that?!" and I stuck up for him, saying "he knows I like baths so he got me a big fluffy towel"

To be fair I still use it and its a nice one - I'm easy pleased.

My MIL bought me a shovel one Christmas. Has come in handy a few times...

i hate smelllies and handcream - I dont use them and have cupboards full.

i heard dh on the phone to NIL the other day who was asking waht we want for xmas, I actaully heard him say "oh she'll love some smellies" and before I could stop myself, I had said "no!" very loudly hehe. Idiot!

When I was about 7-8 years old, I made presents for all my family including a pomander made of a blown egg for my sister. No one had got me anything, but I feigned gracious nevermindedness. Meanwhile, the pomander rolled off the coffee table and my dad accidentally stepped on it. Then he went into the kitchen and came out witha a parcel crudely wrapped in the wrapping paper that I had used which he presented to me with a big smile. I opened it and it was potato peelings! har har har not very har. But its okay, it has given me the sardonic wit and hard exterior I am now blessed with...
My ex husband once gave me david beckham's autobiography which i knew he had purchased at the 11th hour from Tesco's. I took it back and exchanged it for groceries.

A bottle of non-alcoholic wine.

Gifts I have received from DH's family;

A candle snuffer (in case I mysteriously run out of breath, perhaps?)
A dressing gown with a "Guinness" motif - I don't drink
A victorian lady ornament/bell (for my ornament free house)

moondog, I'm pretty sure that last year, if you spent £40 with bookpeople then could get a free Coast address book....

Aww, I want a guinness dressing gown! I hate getting address/birthday books. And deodorant/shower gel sets!

I like candlesnuffers. They don't make as much smoke as blowing it out and you don't run the risk of splattering wax everywhere.

OK, I'm sensing a swap deal here.

I love smellies and candles and will happily pass on candle extinguishing implements and alcohol-related clothing in exchange this year.

Does anyone want the ladybell?

Roll on boxing day.

A glass paperweight with some William Morris Owl-design fabric embedded in it. Quite an expensive one, by the looks of it.

My own mother got me this after I'd asked her for JL vouchers (I was saving up for something large and had asked everyone for the vouchers so that I could get what I wanted). Because vouchers are 'dull'.

Quite apart from the arrogance implicit in 'you have asked for something but I know better so shall ignore your wishes', I don't do paperwork, I don't have a desk to put said abomination on, I dislike owls and William Morris.

It is precisely the sort of thing she'd wet her pants over, so I guess that was why she bought it for me. She couldn't understand why I was upset over it and refused to tell me where she'd got it from so I could take it back - then suddenly it became all about how I'd insulted her by not liking her gift... gosh, I'd best head over to the toxic parenting thread, hadn't I?

I still have it in a drawer somewhere. Anyone want it?

MIL got me a t-shirt with a picture of a wooden spoon and the words 'Domestic Goddess' on it. I have no idea to this day whether she was being sarcastic because she thinks I'm a lazy cow, or if she genuinely thought I'd like it. I never found the right moment to ask

Every bugger gives me wine and I don't and have never drunk alcohol - am well known for not being able to drink at all. Luckily DH is a complete lush in this respect!

My mum always buys me clothes that are masses too big or masses too small or are in a velour which have to be frogmarched back to whence they came and exchange for something in a fabric which doesn't convert ones arse into a small sofa!

DH has offered to 'get' me a vasectomy this year

A wire contraption for holding and pouring wine -

it was so mingingly ugly and cheap looking.

It was actually too small to hold a bottle of wine.

I never saw the problem with standing a bottle of wine on the table.

I was pregnant. missing a little tipple and really fed up with drunk people.

My MIL bought me a cheese and wine gift set. I was 7 months pregnant, so not drinking wine and all the cheese was soft/blue veined that I couldn't eat. Thoughtful gift!!!

An ex boyfriend once gave me a large black bin liner full of the small boxes of tampons that come out of vending machines that he'd purloined from somewhere.
How thoughtful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MIL has for the past 10 years bought me every christmas 2 years worth of floral/musk/vile smelling toiletries. I also get anything that was in the factory sale at revlon that I can't even work out what/why its for or brown shampoo when I'm prodly a redhead? She buys her son fruity smelling stuff, the stuff I want!
Last year he finally told her no more, so I got the worst/strongest smelling bar of soap ever (in my stocking, with food, I'm 32!) which I, in front of her, chucked across the room saying get that away from me befor I'm sick. Bad I know but ahhhhhhh! If I get another body puff I will scream.
She also bought us over 2 years 2 expensive Le cruset cassarole pots when I was vegi and her son wasn't.
One year I asked for black thermal underwear, got twice as much white as black that are still in the packets.
Not christmas, but she still brings us back a fridge magnet everytime she goes on holiday, little china plates from spain with 'gold' on them, nasty cheap things from nasty cheap places.
We have a very small flat, no space for all this stuff. Now all I have to get her to do is knitt in another colour but white for her grandchild. Phew I'm glad thats off my chest!

I got a set of minature antique teaspoons one year

mama Mia in any form

sweets( i am diabetic)-every year...

anything that smells of 'fragrance' perfume, oils,bubble bath, pot pourri, candles, drawer liners etc etc.
I am completely allergic and will come out in hives.

Any more shabby chic nonsense

cook books

snow domes ( i collected them when i was 8)
and now i am 42 - so i gave it up 30 odd years ago

I used to cook professionally and i still love cooking and i love cookbooks!
Except i scribble all over them adapting recipes!

I am so easy to buy for there is nothing i wouldn't like.

An ex-bf who was besotted with me remembered I had commented on the mirrored waterfall picture in the curry house (it was hideous and it made a sort of waterfall noise as well as trickling light effects). He searched and managed to find one for me for christmas.

Huge, heavy and hideous - what a great combination - worst thing was, the charity shop wouldn't accept it because it plugged in! So I had to put it in the loft

whispers it's still there I assume - I moved!

Never, ever comment on something tacky in the two months before christmas and in the company of a potential present buyer.

My p-i-l excel at multiple presents of cheap, supermarket-bought crap. Most of it goes straight to charity shops in january, and it always makes me sad at the waste of effort and money - why do they think I want a boxed soap set, or a cheap plastic vinyl handbag? On the other hand, now we have a baby, apparently their policy on christmas presents is none for the grown-ups after they've produced children of their own.

After I spent a week of my hard earned hols cleaning a damp, smelly holiday cottage I share with my BIL and SIL, removing 25 years of other people's minging grime, pubes as well as a litany of dead insects, bitching for every single moment of the process, with toddlers snapping at my ankles, my non-working SIL (who has grown up kids and a cleaner, and whose own idea of cleaning is possibly wiping down a worktop once a week, but only if she has personally used it) gave me a pair of rubber gloves and a signed book on house cleaning by Kim and Aggie because she decided I was one of those people who 'liked' cleaning.

I think the perfect revenge would be a monster stocking with every single nasty present you have all posted on here. Send me your poor and disaffected, and I will regift them to her!! HAHAHA!!

From my (very-ex) MIL I once received as my Christmas present a box of sage and onion Paxo. That was 2 years past its sell-by date. My then dh was smirking as I received my "gift" (he was clearly thinking that he was in line for a real present from his mother). It was then my turn to smirk when she presented him with an old bit of garden hose she had found at the back of her shed. (This was down to her, er, quirkiness, rather than a lack of funds, being as she was a 5 foreign holidays a year and champagne for breakfast kind of a woman).