Worst Christmas presents

[Big Jack McBastard]

When I was about 15 I got a crappy little gyroscope of an aunt and uncle who clearly didn't give a fuck, why they bothered is beyond me, perhaps they're still expecting me to build a perpetual motion machine with it or something.

A card (or even no card) would have been preferable, basically it was something to put away in a corner somewhere and eventually, years later, throw out.

Although now I'm an uncle I could have foisted it off on my brother's wee 'un in a few years time to keep the confusion/boredom a tradition, missed a trick there.

[Buelligan]

A friend of mine bought his sister-in-law a giant dildo for Christmas.  He left it, beautifully giftwrapped, beneath his parents' tree so that, after church, when the presents were opened en famille, every straight-laced one of them would be able to congratulate her.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

a crappy little gyroscope of an aunt

[yokel]

My uncle's been divorced for quite a while and has a new  wife he's been dating for about seven years now and she's a sweet lady along with her daughter and the two of them have a really nice barn out in the Illinois country. But my Uncle has always had poor choices in gift giving: one year I got a Mcdonald's toy for the film Treasure Planet(I was 14 or so mind although I do have a large figure collection, but come now, surely he could have put some thought into it) and last year, since I told everyone I wanted to be a writer, he gave me this Twilightish book by a Illinois University graduate and I never read it, it just looked doofy.
I think ol Doomy and Drug Bust win this thread however. Doomy, when you gonna write that memoir?

[Stone Cold Jane Austen]

My dad's presents are always bizarre, usually a combination of stationary and knives and anything with a built-in calculator or stopwatch. I've already opened this years gifts from him; 1) An extra large fleece jacket  (despite the fact that I am, and always have been, painfully svelte)[nb]Which isn't too bad, it's snug enough to wear around the house and it makes me look like Dee Dee from Limmy's Show[/nb] and 2) A guide to London music venues, written in 2002 (I live in a small town on the england/ wales border)

Cheers Dad. I got you the fucking Partridge book.

[the midnight watch baboon]

Every year I get a Lynx shower gel/deodorant set. I have about 8 of them in a bedside drawer which I'd like to stash better things in, like ropes and tissue. I plan to dispose of them, can by bottle, in the swimming pool changing rooms when I start breaststroking again in the new year. I tell them, no more Lynx! Every year though.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I offer my gifts to others for scrutiny:

-A nurse's watch (recipient is a nurse)
-Headphones
-A set of The Snowman coasters
-A huge box of assorted italian biscuits
-A laptop cooler
-F1 2011 for the xbox 360
-A book about the artist David Hockney (cheapest I could find)
-Framed photos of my brothers and sisters
-I, Partridge

[Benway]

Edited as this made me seem like an ungrateful arsehole

One funny gift was from an elderly family friend, the type who'd you call an aunty despite her not being related to you. In her twilight years when she was beginning to lose it, she'd buy me a torch for both my birthday and xmas, as well as any other special occasions that she could remember. As the stubborn old bugger persisted for quite a few years, I amassed a full cupboard full of half-working torches that were usually of the same design and colour. I think that she helped keep that one market stall in business!

[jenna appleseed]

this Christmas
proper present from my aunt -  audiobook version of a Doctor Who book I've owned since 1993,
read by a bloke who played The Master in the original series and isn't dead yet.
It's actually supposed to be good but I don't really do spoken word, I'm usually listening to anything while sat right here at the computer/on the internet & have enough trouble concentrating on radio interviews/dj chat/track ids at the same as whatever I'm reading.

mum's traditional bonus tat from Santa:
make up that came free with magazines (I don't wear makeup), things that look like mini plastic ipods that came from Macdonalds and plays clips of The Sugababes/Pixie Lot, art of the bonsai potato 'joke' mini kit&book(wtf?) and worst a foot/nail care set in plastic pouches including a foot emery board type thing that had obviously been used, put back  in and resellotaped closed.
She'd forgotten she'd used it.
It had yellow cheesy looking bits of skin on both sides ffs 

[easytarget]

Not a Christmas present but I just received this email from a colleague...

and in the words of tiny Tim from the inhibitable Christmas Carol (Scrooge)

God Bless Everyone and keep safe

Yeah, cheers for that

inhibitable?
I also like how Christmas Carol was written by Scrooge...

[Winjer]

inhibitable?

Yeah, It's quite accurate. It's advising if you're reading the book you can put the book down. If you're watching the film you can turn the TV off...etc

[Lyndon]

I keep coming back to that and laughing.

[vrailaine]

Just this year, my friend's ex who is now basically stalking her and sending weird messages faked his suicide, pretending to be his uncle he sent a ton of abuse blaming her and on Christmas Day he decided his gift to her would be to reveal he was still alive.

[The Boston Crab]

Love that guy already. He sounds brilliant.

[phes]

My mum was given a small box of five luxury chocolates with two missing. My girlfriend got a 'Keep Calm and Drink Coffee' mug - she doesn't like coffee. That was a priceless double whammy.

[vrailaine]

My dad got my mam  castrol gtx this year, a few years ago he got her grave lights.

[Buelligan]

Just this year, my friend's ex who is now basically stalking her and sending weird messages faked his suicide, pretending to be his uncle he sent a ton of abuse blaming her and on Christmas Day he decided his gift to her would be to reveal he was still alive.

She should call the fucker's bluff and marry him.

[Rev Arthur Belling]

I received a gift from my sister comprising "Reindeer poo in a box - includes Christmas tree seeds!" bearing the Natural History Museum brand.  Nothing unduly remarkable about that I suppose except that it was almost certainly the exact same box that I had given my brother-in-law (her husband) for crimbo just 12 months previously.  (And that was the box my partner had received from an old school friend a year prior to that!)

So I now have a box of reindoor poo (includes Christmas tree seeds!) which has been passed on a minimum of three times and who knows how many times more before it entered my immediate circle.  For all I know it's been in circulation for twenty years!  Will no-one love it enough to just plant the bloody seeds in the poo and watch the Christmas tree grow?  If not, some poor sod at my office will be getting it in the 2012 secret Santa.

Next stop - the freecycle thread.

[idunnosomename]

Well you can hardly complain because you gave them a crap piece of whimsy which you also had not purchased. Why doesn't your partner sodding plant the seeds in it then??

[Rev Arthur Belling]

Fair question.  I guess it's because she's always complaining that there's already too much crap in our house (primarily, I suspect, my enormous collection of Beach Boys paraphenalia) without voluntarily adding reindeer poo (with or without Christmas tree seeds) to the sum total of our material possessions.

[holyzombiejesus]

I gave my sister a 2nd hand Jim Royle doll that was 2 quid in Save The Children. It had dirt on the arms and talks when you squeeze it. Quite possibly one of the shittest, most horrible things I've ever clapped eyes  on. It looks like it could come to life and crawl across the floor, saying 'my arse'.

[Don_Preston]

Terrible!

[Jake Thingray]

Hardly a present, but certainly something that's happened just now and which I was genuinely unaware of, is finding out my brother is friends on Facebook with Josie Long. Am toying with never speaking to him again.