Multiple crap presentness
My mum received a spanky new washing machine for valentines, V. romantic considering the twat who gave it to her effectively stole that money from my gran for his "business" (£75,000 in total)
The usual hideous sweater with overly coloured christmas trees and stuff on (our family now wears them round work at christmas for laughs)
About a decades worth of novelty slippers in many amusing and cute shapes, almost guarunteed to help you fall down stairs, nice.
My mother also keeps giving me "fun" kitchen utensils despite the fact I hate cooking and have no intention of spending any longer in the kitchen than I have to.
Loving (and batty) mother has also given me Parker fountain pens on more than one occasion, possibly as a hint to improve my writing.
(Puddingbat, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 14:03, Reply)

i would kill
for a teenage mutant ninja turtle tracksuit
(magictorch, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:46, Reply)

Got this from a mate at work:
The worst Christmas present I heard of was an inadvertent one. One of my
aunties worked for Sterling Health, making liver-salts, milk of magnesia etc.
She and her colleagues were always being troubled by one of the cleaners so
one Christmas my auntie gave this cleaner a box containing tins of liversalts,
milk of mag and the other products, and left a piece of paper with "greedy
bugger" written on it in the box. Unfortunately this cleaner couldn't read.
When they got back after New Year my auntie asked if she had taken the box
home, in case the manager found it. The cleaner said she had, but as she
didn't need the stuff she'd given it to an old woman upstairs who never got
anything and was delighted with it. So my aunt asked if she'd taken the paper
out. The reply was "No, I noticed you'd written Merry Christmas so i just left
it in".
(Wrecked Tums, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:45, Reply)

My aunt managed to come up with a whole (matching) pair of socks
They were beige.

In a brown paper bag.

For my 18th.

Biyatch.

P.S. Who's this "Shoddy", and what's he presenting?
/obtuse
( badg3r :: what are you insinuating, you equity ponce? last considered changing his board sig on, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:44, Reply)

just remembered
how could have forgotten this little gem of a gift.

when i was about 7 i did not recieve the usual 5x20p taped to the inside of a card from my mum's auntie. instead i recieved a plastic money bag (you know the ones the bank use to hold 10 quid in £1 coins) filled with water!!

a bag of fucking water!!

i thought maybe the stupid cow forgot the goldfish or something but when i read the postcard it said, greetings from canada, blah, blah, have some fresh snow as we know you will not get a white christmas!!

i couldn't fucking believe it. the mental old biddy had actually thought the snow would stay in its frozen state.

still being retarded is no excuse for actually sending someone frozen water from a foreign country for christmas. made me chuckle though.

still it was better than getting a plane ticket stub for a trip to australia from my ex's flight out there. cunt
( MagicallyInept Bored Sig., Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:42, Reply)

Crappy Crap but my Gran was cool!
My aunty the damn anorexic food dodging wierdo that she was use to have a habit of buy the
worst possible tat that ever excisted.

For example she bought me a cream waist coat with green and white vertical stipes on the back.
I was 16 at the time, wearing Nike and only wearing sports stuff cause it was 'COOL'.

I refuse presents from her now I just say that she should spend the money on my little nieces who are cute and adorable and should be tormented by her crap instead of me.

I do see people slagging their grans off my gran was the coolest.
Without doubt she would get me the latest Beano Annual, a PC game whatever I had mentioned recently and she would make jokes about giving me socks.

Unlike my mum who would buy me at least 30 pairs of socks and pants......ARGH
(DJPete1, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:30, Reply)

I have a fat Danish "Auntie Anne"
who is this crazy friend of my mums.
Now, I'm not quite sure if Anne has the foggiest fucking idea about gift giving but she certainly makes up for it with her enthusiasm.

Every year, I will receive a good 20 or so presents, carefully wrapped in 10 layers of paper and tape, which i have to unpick in front of my family so they can all have a good nosy at what's inside.

After wearing my fingertips down to bloody stumps, there are usually some choice presents to be found.

Used soap
A pasta server
A used apron with a big stain on it
Some sweets that smelt like dog shit
and the best of all....87p in a tobacco tin.

And no, I didn't spend it all at once....
( Scary Mary The D'oh Fairy, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:30, Reply)

"A fucking bus conductor's outfit..."
Round about this time of year when we were kids my nan asked me and my brother what we wanted to be when we grew up. I gave a typically kiddy answer and said I wanted to be an astronaut, my younger brother (who would have been all of 5 years old at the time) said he wanted to be a bus conductor. After all the grown-ups had stopped laughing at this we had a biscuit and it was all forgotten about.

Or so we thought.

So Christmas rolls around and it comes to nan's presents. I was only a kid so I didn't even sense the worst when I saw my brother open up a shiny astronaut outfit. I eagerly tore the paper off hoping for something equally as cool only to be confronted with a fucking bus conductor's outfit. The silly mare had got our 'dream jobs' mixed up.

If I can find it I'll post the photo of me and my brother in front of the christmas tree in our outfits. Him pretending to be walking without gravity and looking like Spaceman Spiff and me looking dead miserable in a fucking bus conductor's outfit complete with a fucking ticket machine.

They even made me give out tickets everytime someone entered or left the room.

Fucking bus conductors.
(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:25, Reply)

Halloween
Last Halloween by best friends were taking their 4 kids round our estate. They came to my house with them screaming TRICK OR TREAT...

Oh How I was Evil.

I went to the kitchen got the box of Bran Flakes and put 4 Tubes of sweets in the box.
I took a big hand full of Bran Flakes and walked to the door which was closed over opened the door with their eyes glowing, only to seem wuth a hand full of Bran Flakes and I said who wants some..hehe

I popped bran flakes in all their bags with great enjoyment. While they looked like they were going to cry......then proceed to pop the big tubes of sweets into the bags.

U must be evil to them cause when I was a lad we use to get tricks played on us more than getting sweets.

:)
(DJPete1, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:22, Reply)

recurring secret santa theme
my workmates at the performing rights society - 1st floor, berners street - got me a 'remote controlled fart noise machine disguised as a crap stereo' a couple of years back.

it was rather funny, but limited in application.

i gave it to my parents, who now frighten their cats with it.
(magictorch, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:21, Reply)

Daffy Duck
My half-brother, some years back, received from his white-trash uncle a bootleg VHS tape for Christmas. Latest blockbuster, filmed from the back of a cinema? Some kind of pr0n or horror that would make right-thinking minds huddle under a table? No, it was a badly duplicated tape of four Daffy Duck cartoons. I'm pleased to not be a blood relative.
( Irregular Shed is trying to remember what it is he does, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 13:19, Reply)

galloping gourmet
scenario : nice big prezzie from the wife . Great slowly unwrap it to prlong the suspense . ooohhh big box with kenwood written on it , superb needed a new car stereo . faster unwrapping reveals a $&^%$£ng kenwood chef food processor accompanied by the words i knew you wanted to get into a bit of cooking ........ oh really well guess whose getting 2 new playstation games then for her birthday...............
(shaggly, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:57, Reply)

fucksticks... i just remembered
www.uopsocial.com/images/2002/2002xmas.htm - look at the SHIT presents we got!! a box of fucking fake present things? what the fuck were they thinking.
( SiX and his hat, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:48, Reply)

For my 21st Birthday
I got a small plastic compass from my gran. My sister got £250

bitch
( SiX and his hat, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:39, Reply)

Oh, I got some winners
Clown teapot, shortly followed by a dumping. More upset about receiving a clown teapot than getting dumped, frankly.

A couple of years ago: A skull shaped moneybox, from my sister. To a man who's just had his second child, that's a nice additon to daddy's desk isn't it? Scared the crap out of the kids.

Last year's birthday: a 3 foot laughing buddha. I ask you. As my main present from the present Mrs Argh-Wrath.

Also last year, from the mother-in-law: A didgeridoo. WTF?

Yes, last year, I was a very sulky 32 year old. I mean, a laughing Buddha. FFS, who do they think I am?.

In their defence, m-i-l got me a ceremonial sword this year for my handfasting, and the present mrs A-W surpised me with a DVD player the previous year, so I guess I'll keep her.

But don't ask about my top presents I gave as a teenager. I was horrible, the ultimate in getting other folk stuff I wanted.
( Argh-wrath ... is a very lame Glorantha joke, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:36, Reply)

secret santa
I come from Perth, but I have been working in Cambridge for about 4 years. We have a secret santa every year in our office. I received a small decently weighted box. I opened it up and it looked like a mug. Not bad I thought. Hopefully it was one of those ones with bits that disapear when they get hot. I then opened up the packaging some more and found it was a fscking Dundee football club mug. bastards.
(thrain, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:36, Reply)

Liverpool strip
An old friend of mine loved Liverpool FC when he was a kid and wanted nothing more that the football strip, to be like all the other boys. Imagine his delighted little face on crimbo day when he unwrapped a soft gift, and lo and behold it was a Liverpool FC jersey!...Literally. His gran had knitted him one, with knitted badge and knitted number. His parents then tarred him with the 'Ungrateful Little Wretch' brush and made him play out in it.
(ell, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:34, Reply)

Evil parents
The worst present I ever had was a note from Santa on Christmas morning. At 9 years old I'd proclaimed to my parents on Christmas Eve that I no longer believed in Father Christmas (actually, that's quite old for that realisation isn't it? Oh well...). Christmas morning I was woken up by my brother screeching at me and asking what I had as my 'end of the bed' Santa present. Answer? A letter. From Santa. Saying that, as my parents had informed him that I no longer believed in him I was no longer entitled to any presents at Christmas. I may have cried a bit (and I did get my presents about an hour later).
( moonspoon blowin' free, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:33, Reply)

Sad..
I once went on holiday with my Mum, her (now ex-) friend, and that friend's son. In North Wales.

Sad.

The holiday was the son's birthday treat.

Sadder.

His Mum's present to him?
A soap-on-a-rope.

Saddest.
(yiddo, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:29, Reply)

As they grow older....
the presents get increasingly random.
For example, my Grandma one year gave me a womans purse. Wierd. Don't really know what she was thinking...

Doesn't quite top my Mum though... one year she gave me a DVD for Christmas. I didn't have a DVD player, or a TV, and upon looking at the back, saw that it had been a free gift from a magazine. Touching.
(lat297, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:29, Reply)

Snobby relatives.
I have some of the snobbiest aunts and uncles you could ever hope to meet. Their children are brats, their houses are huge and their cars are fast.
Usually they just slipped a fiver inside a cheap Christmas card but one year they wanted a change of pace.
They gave me a cardboard cracker with chocolate coins inside. The coins smelled like bleach so I had to toss them. I think I scratched myself with the cardboard cracker too.
They didn't get a thank you note that year.
(Blue Phoenix, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:23, Reply)

Not a gameboy
Circa 1990, age 11-12. My Nan told me she'd bought me a present, and that it was quite expensive.

My eyes lit up! Oh my, Nan's bought me a gameboy. Yey! I have only been pleading for one of these since they came out

No, it wasn't a gameboy.
It was a fucking mirror. I was devastated.
(Ariaxen, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:16, Reply)

'A Walk along the Ganges'
My brother's godfather is a high-up churchman who lives in Windsor Castle (and is therefore not what one might call 'on the breadline'). Also being a churchy type you might think he'd take his godfatherly status seriously and this would be reflected in the thoughtfulness of his gift-buying. You would be wrong.

One year he gave my bro (aged about 15 at the time) a Windsor Castle teatowel - clearly purloined from the gift shop in said castle. Another year he passed on a book about some fucking vicar who walked along the Ganges, with whoever originally gave it to him's birthday wishes still written inside.

Blessed are the stingy and lazy. Psalms IV.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 12:08, Reply)

It's always fucking Aunties isn't it? Whores.
My auntie Nimmie (her real name is Effie, which is debatably worse) has always excelled at giving the worst presents imaginable.

One Christmas, she gave a a ring binder file. Not even one with a picture on the front or something like that. Just a plain green ring binder file without even any paper inside it.
( 100% Cock Raw like carrots., Fri 24 Sep 2004, 11:43, Reply)

When I used to meet up with my mates at the pub after Xmas
we all used to turn up in the worst item of clothing we'd got that year.
One year I won with a jumper that had Xmas trees on it.
(Doctor Evil, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 11:38, Reply)

More recently...
... as in this year, my brother invited me to lunch on OUR birthday.
Yes, he is my twin brother, and therefore, you would imagine, Dear Reader, that he might have had plenty of forewarning that he should buy me a present.
I spent a couple of days looking for just the thing for him, consulting his fiancee on my choice, wrapping it carefully, as you do.

When we met for our birthday lunch In the pub (they were on the way back from Sainsbury's, which you will discover is a relevant detail) I gave him his present.
He unwrapped it, and the second present. He loved them both.
However, there was a look of the guilty and sheepish about him. Could it be that he felt his present to me might not be up to the same standard as mine?

After a bit of unsubtle prompting, he left the table, and wandered off across the car park to his car. He rerturned, a minute later, with a Sainsbury bag.
Inside the bag? A bottle of wine.
Nothing wrong with that, obviously, but given that he'd known that my birthday was on the same day as his for the last 30-odd years, the fact that it was just a bottle from the back of the car, still in it's carrier bag, showed that he clearly had no intention of buying me anything, and had beeen cajoled into relinquishing a bottle of wine from the weekly shopping.

Tight git.

Girth, length and height apologies in the post...
(doctor sideburns, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 11:32, Reply)

Notoriously bad at buying presents...
... my aunt's piss poorness was compounded by the fact that my cousin, who is one year younger, had his birthday a little over a week earlier. Every year, I would go with my Mum to help buy a kick ass present and each year I would chose sometyhing that was truly awesome and in return I would get something that was proper gash.

However, one year, that I remember distinctly well, I went shopping and bought my cousin a table top pool set, it was reduced from like £70 to £35 but having spent a lot of time playing on it before giving it to him can assure you that it was awesome.

So, imagine my disgruntlment one week later when, on my Birthday, I opened up the reciprical present to find a pair of those Tote socks with the grip on the bottom.

I know this sounds highly ungrateful and to be quite frank, I am. but at what point did she think that a 15 year old lad would appreciate a pair of socks that you can't even wear with shoes?
(Dave_of_the_Dead, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 11:31, Reply)

Kids Books
I have a great aunt (what is it with shoddy presents and aunts??) who is friends with a childrens author. Every year my sister and I would get a signed copy of her latest book on our birthdays and at christmas. This was fine when we was little, but as we entered our teens the kids books still kept right on coming! I'm now 21, and my latest copy is about a hobgoblin who lives in some kids garden.

We also get 2 x 50 pence pieces sellotaped inside our birthday cards too.

Gawd bless 'er!
(Mogg Questioned her own sanity on, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 11:30, Reply)

skitster - the word you
are looking for is Decoupage...(don't ask me how i know that)

my auntie is quite well know n for 'interesting' presents, gets them from a place she describes as 'the warehouse'. Many times i've had to foist bad slippers onto my mum and accidentally leave foam flipflops (with flowers) in the old house when i move.

Best of all was when she got my dad a handbag thing. Apparently its very chic in europe. It got left behind when we went home

My mum is almost as bad, but only when she gets stuff for my other half - cheap plastic razors and deoderant usually.
( Citizen Cavy Admires your passion for conformity, Fri 24 Sep 2004, 11:22, Reply)