My family is kind of like @busdriver11 's grandparents who would wrap up and give small items (like household stuff) at Christmas. We don’t get anything all that expensive, but with our kids, we would wrap up special treats like…well…yummy flavored kid gummy-bear vitamins and the expensive type of teeth flossers that I normally don’t buy, then also we have gifts like books and maybe art supplies. So ah not really ‘traditional’ Christmas gifts. But we only do Christmas by ourselves. We also kind developed these quirky Christmas traditions (the mundane gifts is just one).
So anyhow one year my husband has friends visiting with us over Christmas. Nice folks, great guests but I don’t really know them. The kids were young and they had no idea that our family was “weird”. They were so excited to open the gifts that Santa had brought. They were young teens and did not believe in Santa anymore but another one of our quirky traditions was to pretend that Santa left the gifts. We wrap them in plain paper and rub soot on the paper and such. Anyhow, I could not figure out how to manage opening the gifts without our friends there. The only way I could manage a super early private opening was to reveal to the kids that we were “weird” and that we should just open a few items now and sing some carols, then do the rest later. But they’d always looked forward to Christmas morning and being silly about how “thoughtful” Santa was to bring us dental floss and acne cream (oh gads) and 'how did he know I needed new silver sharpie pens?" [I’m dying inside a little as I remember this Christmas].
And my husband! He made a big show of inviting our friends to open gifts with us (?!) Totally unhelpful. Well, it was kind of mortifying for me. Here the kids are expecting me to be silly and hamming it up as usual and well I do, but I felt so acutely aware of how “weird” we are.
When I went to my then 3 month boyfriend’s home for Christmas, we all, his M & F and sister and Bf (now H)
and I opened gifts together. H got his usual underwear gift. I got, and had to open in front of everyone, crotchlees “porn” underwear from H’s sister. Admittedly she suffers from a mental health issue. But everyone laughed and wanted a picture of us ( H and I) both holding up our underwear.i It is now part of their family picture album.
I was mortified and could only think if that had happened at my, conservative, parents home. Hahaha.
I thought I was being thoughtful also, @deb922, but I think if I had put it all in a massive gift basket, they would have been more impressed with the same stuff. I have had some other complete misses on gifts that took a lot of effort, so now I don’t want anybody except my family opening my gifts in front of me!
To add, I completely understand @liska21’s story. I would not want to have guests there, with such an untraditional type of Christmas, unless they really understood us, and appreciated our traditions. But you’ve given your kids wonderful memories for the ages!
Decades ago H’s medical office Christmas dinner plus party. I had infertility and we finally had a newborn. Funny gift was later kept hidden in a drawer and thrown out years later- a happy sperm candle (?). Too bad we needed to leave early because of our (first) babysitter on a school night so we missed many other funny gifts given out. Needless to say this was not a gift talked about with all.
My MIL gave me clothes, then insisted I go put them on so she and my FIL could decide if they were flattering or not. My husband put an end to that after a couple years when it became obvious they weren’t going to stop. She also gave me clothes several times (she found my wardrobe uninspired) and then brought out the things she bought for me but “kept because I liked them so much myself”.
And I kept the black satin trenchcoat with shiny bright purple lining just because she was trying to be nice. My sons referred to it for years as “Mom’s hooker coat”…
I used to be more energetic and would spend a lot of time putting together gift bags of several little gifts for my nieces and nephews (each individually wrapped like busdriver’s). I’m a kid at heart and really loved searching for small (actually the tinier the better) fun items to wrap and put in the bags. They were a big hit - the first year, my nieces called and said, “We kept thinking we were done, but we kept reaching in and finding more!” I think I went that route, just because I liked shopping for little kids, but also didn’t want to pick just one big gift that they might not like - so I got them several little ones. There were some great toy stores back in those days - about 20 or so years ago before everything could be purchased online? I don’t see those specialty stores anywhere anymore - even so, I don’t have any little kids to buy anything for anymore, darn it.
Our weird family tradition (started by my late Dad) is throwing a gift wrapped potato or turnip into the kids’ gift piles. They usually open it up, say “Ha ha” unenthusiastic-ally, and then just move on.
One gift that totally embarrassed me was a gift given to me by one of my older adult cousins when I was about 8 or so. I have no idea why she decided I needed the gift, since she usually didn’t buy gifts for me. Anyway, one Christmas, she handed me a package that I had to open in front of the whole extended family - aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. It was some kind of weird one piece bright yellow jumpsuit-type pajama thing made of sheer nylon. This was the late 60’s and the legs were VERY wide bell bottoms trimmed at the bottom in ruffles - the top part also had a few ruffles and spaghetti straps. I was a tomboy, and I was NOT happy and everyone thought that my reaction was hilarious. Except my Mom who scolded me - but the pajamas were hideous, and I just wanted to go hide in a closet. To this day, I think it was a mean gag gift and she intended to embarrass me - she always had a strange sense of humor.
Like bus driver, my mortification is due to the reaction of the recipient of my gifts. I often spent the holiday with spouses’s family, so I would send gifts to my own family to be opened on Christmas. I would pick out a bunch of small gifts and then often buy several of the same item for my parents and siblings. One year I bought everyone a salad spinner - I had one that I was using quite a bit and I knew that my family members did not have one. Apparently the recipients of the salad spinners all thought it was a gag gift and returned them to the store.
When I was a child, my grandfather would give my brothers and me money to go Christmas shopping. It was money to be spent on others, I suppose to teach us it is better to give than receive. I loved going to the little gift shop and picking out small, decorative items for everyone on my list until one day I overheard my grandmother say to my mother, “If musicmom1215 gives me one more candle, I don’t know what I’ll do with it.” I was devastated. Gift shopping became more stressful after that because I was worried that the recipient wouldn’t like it.
My aunt by marriage gave all of us the same gift one year, some zipper pillow with some animal in front. I think u could hide your pjs in it. Well, I was maybe 4, but other relatives were 16 or 18. It was too silly for me to ever use, let alone my older cousins. I think we all had the giggles the 10th time or more we opened the same gift.
Last year I gave my DD2018’s boyfriend of 6 months a pair of metallicy shiny american flag (his birthday is on the 4th of July and he always gets decked out from head to toe in flag gear) underwear from American Eagle. While my DD was mortified, the BF loved them. It was sort of a test and I figured if he could be a good sport about a funny embarrassing gift he was a keeper! He is still around…not sure how I am going to top that one!
Too many good bad gifts. My dad used to send a box of hilarious stuff to all the husbands in the family: junk that he picked up at conventions, like beer holders, pens, notepads, etc…and random odd things: (yeah, I know I can’t put another colon here but…) car tree fresheners, packets of instant ramen, and one year, a container of Spam.
So I used to be involved in a women’s club with some friends, and we decided to attend a white elephant Christmas party. This was a fairly large gathering, probably forty women were there. I thought it would be hilarious to bring the Spam as a white elephant gift. We all arrived at the party with beautifully wrapped presents. Eventually, it was time for opening. But most of the gifts were actually pretty nice. People had clearly gone out and bought actual gifts for this party, because most were things like cutting boards, salad bowls, and wine glasses. Then some poor woman opened my Spam. I did feel a bit sorry for her. Thank goodness no one actually ever knew that I brought it.
But the party got worse. This party was in 2008. The party organizer asked everyone to go around and say what they were grateful for. Most people were grateful for family, friends, etc… When it came time for my first friend to say what she was grateful for, she proudly said she was grateful for Obama, and my friend sitting next to her heartily agreed…but this was followed by a fantastically awkward silence. A random woman next to that friend had to get things back on track by talking about whatever she was grateful for. Needless to say, that was the last white elephant party we attended. We all still laugh about it, haha!
@Onward, surely your mom was just trying to hurry up the arrival of a grandchild!
This isn’t a Christmas gift, but I once worked in an office with a group of young people just out of college, 3 guys and a woman. We worked a lot of hours together and they were a pretty tight knit group. The girl was getting married. We collected some office money for a gift, and the guys offered to take care of it. Well… they came back to the office with some very racey red lingerie. My boss took one look and sent me to the mall with them to return it and pick something more suitable.
Not mortifying, but a truly bad gift, was the Christmas DH saved the “best gift for last” – a paper cutter, with those wheels for cutting fancy edges. No clue why he thought that was such a great gift, but he did use to enjoy shopping at Staples.
My MIL once sent me sexy lingerie which went directly into the trash. I sent her a note thanking her for the “PJs.”
When my brother and I were kids, like 10 and 6, he wrapped a palm leaf as my gift. It still makes an occasional re-appearance. As do the traditional “socks” mom got us every year.
One funny one involved my mom giving my grandfather a gift (I can’t remember what it was) but she wrapped it in a pencil sharpener box and when he unwrapped that box he was SO HAPPY!!! “I need this so bad!!!” etc etc Until…he opened the actual box and it was a mug or something. We tend to joke around and not assume what is on the box is the gift inside.
As odd as this might sound to the gift lovers in the world, I do not enjoy receiving gifts and I find it extremely stressful when I have to show up somewhere with a gift. So, this thread is making me laugh, and making me anxious, all at the same time. lol
I have gotten some very odd things from H and SisIL. She always gave me things that were size L or XL tho I’m a S or M. They were fine — as PJs, if I wanted to go for the ultra-baggy look.
H gave me a very bright red dress in thick, heavy polyester once (didn’t fit, wasn’t my style and was returned). He also gave me a size 10 ring that was even too big for my big toe, but our jeweler was able to resize it into an oval so it sort of fits now. We mainly give each other experiences, trips and nice meals at restaurants we enjoy. It’s more fun and we really have lots of “stuff.”
One Christmas, DH opened a present from his dad (far away) and it was a duplicate of something he had received for his birthday in June. It was a single cup coffee maker. He put it aside, not wanting to let his dad know he’d forgotten what he’d given him earlier. Several months later a co-worker of DH admired the single cup coffee maker and asked where he bought it. DH assured him he had an extra and he would be happy to pass it along. The co-worker came back the next day and said, “Maybe you want this?”. It was a hand made bird house that was supposed to look like a human face. FIL had wrapped it in the box from his own coffee maker and DH had never even opened the box. The bird house was just as useless as an extra coffee maker.
