50 Gifts You Should Not Think About Getting Anyone This Christmas 

1. Foundation (as in makeup) from my husband. Turns out he went to Sephora, pointed at a color and said, “that looks about right” (with his FEMALE friend who ALSO wears makeup AGREEING) and bought it for me!

I am a pasty white girl. Like I’m always the lightest shade, and sometimes the lightest shade is too dark.

The color they picked was from the middle-to-end range.

2. A bunch of random tools from my wife. Not tools I needed. Not tools I asked for. Not tools I could use for my hobbies. Just random tools she picked out from Lowes because “Guys like tools”.

I love my wife, she has a ton of amazing qualities, but she’s a really crappy gift-giver a lot of the time.

3. My wife and I got a wildlife painting from her mom for our wedding. Think of the wildlife paintings you would see in a dentist office.

Like, not anything that fit with our lifestyles, designs or interests at all.

Her mom forgot to take the $2 garage sale sticker off the back too.

4. My mother in-law gave my wife and I a book about surviving infidelity. Neither of us have ever cheated on the other in 20 years of marriage. Merry Christmas.

5. My mother and her friend came to stay with me last year for Christmas and I got them both standard stuff like scarves and bath bombs and stuff.

My mom’s friend got me one gift, which I opened on Christmas morning – it was a package of ground espresso, which I don’t like. I was nice about it and said thank you and then put it in my cabinet and went about celebrating the holiday.

The next day I woke up late and went to go make coffee – she had opened the espresso and made it for herself! I remain deeply offended.

6. My parents, for whatever reason, got me and my sister school supplies for Christmas one year when I was young. Every. Single. Gift. Notebooks, pencils, erasers, protractor, calculator, etc. And I wasn’t even mad. I truly thought my parents believed those gifts are what we wanted for Christmas and I couldn’t bear letting them see my disappointment. So I faked excitement with each gift unwrapped and thanked my parents. To this day, I don’t know if those gifts were some kind of punishment for something we did or if they truly were trying to make us happy. Either way, I just showed them I appreciated whatever they got me.

7. It wasn’t really the gift itself, but what my dad said after I opened it.

It was one of those ninja blenders that a lot of people starting using instead of juicers. I was 16 when my dad gave the blender to me, even though I had never expressed any interest in wanting or needing one.

After I opened it, he said he chose this gift because he wanted me to live a healthier lifestyle and hopefully lose a few pounds.

At the time, I was taking ballet classes 5 days a week, and I often performed with my dance troupe on the weekends, so I was pretty fit at the time.

It didn’t help that he said this in front of his entire side of the family.

8. I got a half of a box of chocolates for my birthday one year. Yep – I opened it and half of them had been eaten already. It wasn’t from a child – it was from adult family members. The reasoning was that they knew I would share them when I opened them, but I was away on a business trip on my actual birthday and they couldn’t wait to eat some.

9. My parents gave me obviously re-gifted dollar store schlock last year. That’s why this year I’m done putting thought into family gifts, I always go overboard anyway. I’d get them gift cards but they constantly lose those too!!

10. My grandfather would give as Christmas gifts free junky stuff he got from his bank or some other such place. Like, a cheesy plastic ornament with the name of some bank or insurance company on it. Then he’d be angry and offended if we did not treat this as the greatest and most generous gift ever.

11. My husband received his recently deceased grandfather’s used disposable razor as a Christmas gift from his grandmother. Complete with hair and all.

12. Had a friend that received a gift from another friend of ours. It was a McDonald’s gift card. When he went to use it there was nothing on it.

13. My extremely cheap uncle visited my family once for christmas and upon his arrival he gave me and my brother the chips that he had gotten on the airplane. This man is a Neurosurgeon.

14. A girl I dated for two years got me a blue Powerade for my birthday because “you like blue Powerade”. I don’t even drink Powerade. Plus it wasn’t even a big bottle, it was one of the smaller ones that come in the packs. That was the end of that relationship

15. My aunt gifted me a snow-scraper for my car. When I opened it she said “I bet you don’t have one of those! “

I was 21, living in northern Midwest and driving everyday. Including that day, which had 4″ of snow.

I gave it away to some fool clearing his widow with a credit card a few weeks later.

16. My grandma went to a paint and sip thing in which she got shmacked and painted the world’s worst flower. She then found a framed stitching of a bird in her closet. She wrapped both of these things and gave them to my sister and I, while she and my parents were pretending that she was losing her mind. My sister and I sat there pretending how great the gifts were and how talented a painter she was.

17. A Facebook points card.

18. My sister got me a rat as a gift. I’m fucking terrified of rats but I decided to let it be and see if it helped curb my fear of them. It did not.

Instead, while I was sleeping it got out of it’s cage, crawled up on my bed, and started chewing on my lip. Didn’t sleep for a week after that. Thoughtful gift in the sense she was trying to help but dear God it made my fear so much worse.

19. My grandmother got me a nightgown one year. I’m a guy.

20. An uncle once gave me a CD that was full of pictures of planes. I think it was called “Wings of Tomorrow” (not the music album by Europe) or something. This was in the mid-late 90s when selling a CD with pictures was a thing that existed, you could find them in like bargain bins at Walmart for a few bucks. I should mention i was like 16, and not into planes.

Also the Christmas card that came with it was a recycled card, as in they got it from someone else, CUT THE SIGNATURE off the bottom, put it in a different envelope, and gave it to me.

I wasn’t expecting anything so I didn’t really care but god, just don’t get anything if that’s what you’re going to do. It was basically saying “here, throw this away for me”.

21. A neon pink New Kids on the Block sweater nearly a decade after the band was popular. My aunt thought it looked “pretty.” I’m a boy.

22. Cousin gave me a picture of herself for Christmas.

23. My uncle got me a taxidermied dove.

24. My grandmother and her dolls! Most little girls love dolls, but that was never me. Probably because I had a grandmother who was a doll maker. I should preface this story with a little back story as to my trauma/fear of dolls being rooted in the fact I would have to stay in the room my grandmother used as a doll assembly room whenever I visiting this side of the family. The bed I slept in was across from a work station with unpainted doll heads, body parts, and eyes laying about like some sort of bad horror, movie minus the fake blood.

Now to the worst gift… My grandmother made a doll that was supposed to look like ME when I was ~6-7 years old! The doll was porcelain, so very fragile, and hand painted by my grandmother in a slightly off putting way. It also wore a frilly blue dress like the twin girls from The Shining wore. Because it was fragile, this doll was for display only. I was required to display this doll in a prominent place in my room for years. This doll stared down at me from my dresser with it’s creepy doll eyes that promised to murder me in my sleep.

25. My mom had a rule about making sure my sister and I had the same number of gifts, regardless of cost per child. To make sure that the number was equal, she gave me a 12 pack of Irish Spring Soap on Christmas.

26. My ex gifted me tickets to a big country music concert for some goofy relationship milestone (like 5 months?). I reminded him that I don’t like country music and he said, “Well, I do and I already bought the tickets so we’re gonna go so the money isn’t wasted.”

That was a dumb relationship.

27. Mom gave me a purse that was so hideous and obviously for herself because of the fact that I was like 10 and it was an oversized bag that I could never carry. I had to get this while I watched my cousins unwrapping all the presents that I actually wanted. I was so heartbroken that my mom didn’t think of me after I had been telling her how much she really doesn’t know me or care to know me and she just proves it again. Well I tried to seem thankful in front of everyone but I really couldn’t handle it at that age so I just said I was going to sit in the car for a while. After maybe 20 min my dad cane out and gave me a $100 bill. I was better after that but my feelings were still hurt and to this day she’ll never acknowledge that she really just didn’t care. The worst part was that my mom just got the purse for herself, knowing I wouldn’t want it. She wore it for a couple years which just made me feel even worse.

28. A gun rack… I don’t even own A gun let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack.

29. I got a spray that you use against foot-odor by my Sister last Christmas, she had packed in a box for a power tool I wanted so I went from excited to disappointed.

She got a quite expensive set of fancy soaps and body products + a gift card from me.

Apparently she gave the power tool to some friend and gave me the box.

30. My mom is always cold. One day she and dad were at a friend’s house, she complained she was cold and friend went and got her a hot water bag thing. She LOVED it. Gushed on and on about how great it was (my mom is a weirdo and loudly overreacts to evvverrrything) My dad paid attention. Come Christmas time, he was SO proud of himself because he had taken note of the stupid hot water bag thing and was gonna get get one for Christmas.

Christmas morning: Mom dad, teenage me and my brother are all sitting around Christmas tree, my mom opens her gift. My dad is smiling bc he FINALLY GOT IT RIGHT (mom is always mad because his gifts suck). Mom opens… A douche kit. He had purchased her a fucking douchebag. I lost my mind.

31. I have a few, all from my husband’s wonderful family. One year, his step-dad’s mother gave me a pair of dirty socks, all wrapped up in pretty paper. I knew they were dirty because they were stained and I could smell the stench the second I unwrapped them.

Another year, MIL was so excited to gift me a fancy cake decorating set. I opened it up when I got home & it was very obviously used-she must have used it for her deviled eggs, and didn’t clean it well enough.

I have never used it because I have no idea who had it before her.

32. A box of Hillshire Farms sausages from my wife’s grandparents. I’m a vegetarian, they had known me for 10 years at this point.

I regifted it to my dad.

33. I’m gonna speak on my husbands behalf here. We don’t speak to his family or see them at all, there’s a history of abuse and just a lot of toxicity so we cut them out of our lives. It’s been almost 3 years of radio silence, which is amazing and it was absolutely the right choice for us. Whelp, unfortunately my husbands parents live in the same city as us and they know where we go to church. So this year, on my husband’s birthday, my MIL dropped off a gift at our church for him because she doesn’t know where we live and can’t contact us any other way.

The gift was the DVD of the movie I Can Only Imagine. If you’re not familiar with the premise of the movie, let me fill you in. It’s about a man who was abused by his father as a boy. He leaves home and stops having a relationship with his dad. Years go by and the man decides to reconcile and rebuild a relationship with his dad, who was previously abusive but because he found God, he isn’t anymore.

It was really fucked up to get that movie from someone who manipulated and abused my husband until his early twenties. So that gift absolutely takes the cake. And in the event MIL or the family finds this comment and reads it (though I doubt they use reddit), the only thing I’ll say directly to you in 3 years is “Shame on you.”

34. On my birthday when I was around 10 my parents got me this adorable pink and yellow bird. At some point during my birthday party all my friends were standing around the table and I’m taking the bird out to show him to everyone and he just dies. Right then.

He was acting a little weird. He must have been stressed with all the people? I don’t know. But he just collapsed and hit the bottom of the cage with a tiny thud. Of course I cried like a little baby. Anyway, my parents went out and got me a new bird that day because it’s safe to say that ruined the party.

35. When I was twelve my grandmother gave me a one-foot tall statue of a frog playing the flute for Christmas. She gave my brother bananas and a granola bar.

36. Before I went to college, my dad gave me a shirt with his face on it to remember him by and said it would help me meet some ladies.

It did not.

37. Ex bf gave me a strap-on for my bday. His reasoning was so I could play with it. Truth was , of course he wanted me to peg him. I had no problem with that. But as a bday gift for me? Not so much.

38. I was living in Korea and we did a gift exchange at work. A female co-worker got me shoe lifts (kkalchang). It is, or was, rather common for shorter men to wear them. I’m only 5’8″ and, naturally, some people assumed I was shorter and was just wearing kkalchang. I opened the box and the look on my face said it all. Her expression went from joy to terror thinking she had insulted me. I threw on a nice face and slid them on, I was almost 5’11”. It was at that moment that I realized a good deal of people assumed I was 5’5″ / 5’6″ pretending to be 5’8″. I was not super happy.

39. When I was about 11 years old I woke up one random morning a few weeks before Christmas to find a brand new Super Nintendo on my kitchen table. Just sitting there. I started freaking out. My mom wakes up and informs me that the night before was her work holiday party and she won the SNES as a door prize.

But you see, there was this really cool leather jacket she had her eyes on so she was going to return it to the store and keep the cash. But if I really wanted it I could buy it from her. She convinced me to sell my original NES and all my games/accessories and give her all the money. Then I was allowed to have the SNES.

At the time I was too young and stupid to think much about it. But only years later did I realize how shitty this was. Personally, if I were the parent, I don’t think I would’ve just given the SNES to my kid right away. But I would probably have thrown it in the closet and said, “Sweet. Christmas shopping is done for little Otto this year.”

40. This is kind of a shitty/hilarious gift. Around Christmas in college, my fraternity would do a Secret Santa exchange (draw a name out of a hat and buy that person a gift). We had a $20 limit on the gifts, and we would exchange them at our annual Christmas party. The first year, my fraternity brother got me a framed picture of him sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall. Not one from his childhood, but one he went to the mall to get earlier that week. It was a terrible gift, but it was hilarious.

41. A 1kg box of dried milk for babies from my uncle

We don’t have any kids and they knew….

42. One year for Christmas I go to open an unusually large present from my grandma. Inside there was a slightly smaller but also large wrapped present and after about 10 more unwrapped presents later I get down to hopefully the last one which is the size of a shoebox. Unwrap it and yep it’s a shoebox but what’s inside I wonder? It’s got to be something good right? …. It was one woman’s shoe. I looked at her confused and then looked down at her feet, she was wearing the other matching shoe with one bare foot I had not noticed before. She kind of giggled, and put the shoe on.

43. Worst gift I ever got was last year from a friend from school. I was 3 weeks post partum with my first kid and in a motel alone for Christmas and she came by with a bunch of JuicePlus tablets and an ItWorks wraps. Then she told me since I’m “doing nothing” I could help her sell it. I was cordial at the time but afterwards I thought it was pretty shitty thing to do.

44. My wife used to give me things that were intended for herself.

This was a win-win for her and a lose-lose for me. She could give me something, then get mad at me for being unappreciative. One time, she gave me a frilly picture frame, thinking I would never use it. I thanked her and took it to work.

45. A bottle of gatorade for my 11th birthday. And on that day my mom dragged me to the store and went ALL out for my cousin in front of me, who was born the next day.

46. My parents renovated my bathroom at their house. It was a “surprise”. Thing is, I didn’t live at home anymore – I had been living in a different state for 4 years. I was visiting for Christmas with my fiancé. Bathroom is connected to my room and everyday for the five days we were visiting we were woken up at 8am and had to leave so the construction guys could work. When I sort of complained about being woken up she called me ungrateful and screamed at me. We didn’t speak for four months.

47. Ex boyfriend gave me a pack of cigarettes after I had quit for 3 months to “celebrate my progress”.

Most memorable thing he gave me was chlamydia though.

48. About 10 years ago my uncle was giving out Christmas gifts to everyone in the family. He’s mentally handicapped but he makes sure to go to the dollar store to buy everyone something, typically mugs. Now my uncle doesn’t really put much thought into who gets what mug. He just wraps the mug and puts someone’s name on it. Sometimes people get multiple mugs and other times you get none because he doesn’t keep track of who has already been assigned a mug. Well my cousin was married to a Muslim (it’s relevant, I promise) and her gift was a mug that said, “Jesus loves you.” It was the only religious themed mug out of probably 50 and she got it. The entire family was laughing, including her. She thought it was great.

49. My older sister got me a Veggie Tales coloring book for my 19th birthday, and it wasn’t meant to be a joke gift.

50. It wasn’t shitty because the gift was that bad, but more because of the context of it. My little brother is the definition of a spoiled asshole. He has been his entire life. One year when I was maybe 13 or 14 and he was 8 or 9 we both asked for dirt bikes for Christmas. I had several friends who went out with their dads on the weekend to the track or out to the desert and I wanted my own bike to go with them. I wasn’t necessarily expecting a dirt bike, but I asked for one anyways. Christmas day comes, little brother, who didn’t want a dirt bike half as bad as I did, got a brand new Kawasaki KX65 dirt bike. I got a $40 remote control dirt bike, he also got the same remote control dirt bike. I remember coming out to the living room that morning and seeing his dirtbike and almost crying. I thought they were playing a joke on me so much to the point that I went and checked the garage and side yard to see if there was another dirt bike. I rode his bike more than he did as he really never had much interest, but it was way too small for me so it wasn’t very useful for me either other than cruising it around the neighborhood once in a while, the thing sat with hardly any hours on it for years and years before my parents basically gave it away.