We’ve all been there. Been on the receiving end of misinformed, clueless, or simply lazy gift givers. Or we’ve watched as others opened gifts they never wanted, never asked for, and won’t keep. We’ve all had to utter that “thank you” under our breath to keep the peace.
Maybe we’ve received the same gift back that we gave somebody last year; that’s always fun! I once received the same gift two years in a row from one friend; it made me wonder whether she bought these items in bulk and was determined to keep giving them until she ran out.
Needless to say, gift giving is fraught with peril and landmines. Here are a few gift-giving never-should-have-happened stories I can recall that date back to childhood. Luckily, I can laugh about them now. As we enter the Christmas giving season, I hope you can absorb a few lessons and keep a few simple guidelines in mind:
- get to know your recipient
- buy what they like/want, not what you like/want
- no household appliances or live animals.
Dad/spouse gifts
One Christmas stands out in my memory when I was 8 or 9 years old. Our tree was up and decorated, and our outdoor blue spruces had lights on them as well. Wrapped presents started to make their appearance underneath the tree, and there were quite a lot of them, with several young kids still living at home. Of course, it was irresistible when a new one showed up—we always had to poke around down there and read the To: and From: tag to see who that one was for!
A few days before Christmas, a huge box showed up under the tree, which made us kids leap out of our skin. But when we looked at the tag, it wasn’t for any of us, it was to mom, from dad!
“Mom! Did you see that box!! It’s for you! What do you think it is?”
She replied, with a big smile, “Well, I don’t know. It just showed up today.”
“But did you ask for something big?” we asked.
“No,” she said. “I really can’t imagine what that is. Gee, maybe it’s a mink coat!” she teased.
The idea that our dad had gone out early and bought her something big and expensive looking clearly had thrilled her, and for the next few days she was in a great mood. She was as puzzled as we were, and we could tell her mind was racing at the possibilities.
Finally, Christmas Eve arrived. In our house, we opened our gifts after dinner on Christmas Eve, not on Christmas morning. After gift opening, the adults would go to midnight mass and sleep late on Christmas Day.
My mom and dad let us kids open our gifts first, which was typical. Finally, they got around to the big mystery box. All eyes were on my mom as she tore into that box. When she got all the paper off and looked at the writing on the box, at first she looked a little confused. Then, we could tell she was thinking, “Well, that’s just the box, not what’s inside.”
But it wasn’t just the box. What my dad had purchased for her was a new medicine cabinet for the bathroom. This was one of those metal cabinets with a mirrored front and several shelves on the inside that got mounted above the bathroom sink. The look on my mom’s face, when it sunk in that that was her big gift—was a mix of shock, disbelief, crushing disappointment, anger—all those things rolled into one. Even as young as I was, I was shocked as well. “What a rip-off,” I thought.
My mom, in trying to save face because we were all staring at her, burst into hysterical laughter, and just kept saying over and over, “He got me a medicine cabinet! He got me a damned medicine cabinet!”
Then my dad started laughing too, but mostly laughing at her, knowing he played this great joke on her, and saying inane things such as “Well, you needed one, right?”
It was one of my earliest lessons in gift giving—how thoughtfulness and kindness must be at the heart of it. For my whole life, I’ve hated practical jokes and practical jokers because they make the victim look like a fool. I’ve often wondered whether this incident was the start of that. Because my mom looked and felt like a fool that day in front of her own family. It was a mean-spirited thing to do on Christmas Eve, a night when everyone should have been happy.
Sister/sibling gifts
Then there was the Christmas when my sister Carol thought it would be a great idea to give all the females in the family the same thing. Yep, her daughter, her sisters, her nieces, and probably any other female within striking distance. I guess it was just too much trouble to think of us as individuals and try to come up with a thoughtful gift we each might love and appreciate. So she went to a department store and bought us all… (wait for it…) ugly Christmas sweaters! She bought identical, mostly bright red sweaters in every conceivable size, the only variable being the design on the front. But they were clearly the same brand/manufacturer, and the only decision she had to make was to guess our size and who was going to get the Santa motif, vs. the Christmas tree, vs. the Christmas elf, etc.
My family was very scattered at this point, living all over the country. So when a big group of us were together at Christmas, we liked to drag out the gift-opening as long as possible. We always went one by one rather than have several people opening at the same time. That way we could see all the gifts and enjoy all the reactions.
My oldest sister Lois opened the first Christmas sweater. We got a good laugh out of it and moved on to the next person. I was the next one to open my gift from Carol, and we were all a bit flummoxed to see an almost identical sweater to Lois’ in my box! But we cracked a few jokes and once again, moved on. At this point, we were thinking “OK, she’s just purchased these sweaters for her four sisters.” But by the time the third and fourth Christmas sweaters were opened, and by non-sisters, Lois and I caught each other’s eye, with a mild look of horror on our faces.
“Holy crap,” I whispered to her. “Did she really do this? Got the same thing for everyone?!”
“I think so,” Lois whispered back. “And my girls might not take that so well.”
Lois’ three daughters were eventually handed their gifts from Carol. The two youngest ones (then in junior high) opened theirs and knew their manners well enough to say a gracious “thank you” and leave it at that. But Lois was visibly squirming when her oldest daughter, Julie, was handed her package. She whispered to me:
“Aww geez. Julie has the worst poker face in the world. She does not fake it well.”
We goaded Julie on: “Come on Julie, open your Christmas sweater! I think I see Rudolf in your future!” Julie was in high school, those tender fashionista years where clothing was a huge part of one’s identity. But she also knew better than to be rude to one of her aunties. With her face almost as red as her new Christmas sweater, she managed to croak out a “thank you” to her Aunt Carol before setting it aside.
We watched 10 to 12 Christmas sweaters opened that year in that small living room. It still boggles my mind that anyone would think that would be a good idea, especially in a family like ours who would never let you forget it. The moral of this story is: if you are going to give a group of people identical gifts, make sure you are shipping them across the country so the recipients will never be the wiser that they all got the same thing.
Boyfriend/girlfriend gifts
Family will find out sooner or later if someone has given a gift that went over like a lead balloon. These people are usually forgiven and we move on, hoping for lessons learned and better days ahead. But boyfriends or girlfriends? Sometimes there’s no teaching these people, and it’s just easier to break up with them.
Once, I dated a guy I’ll call Jim for several months before the Christmas season was upon us. Now, I realize that first set of gift-giving obligations is always dicey—that first birthday, first Valentines Day, first Christmas, it’s always a tricky proposition. You must show that you’ve been paying attention, at least marginally, to what your loved one has been saying and how they live their life.
So on Christmas morning, there we were. My two gifts from him were: 1) A Nutri Ninja juicer, and 2) a room scent diffuser, one of those things that melts wax pellets and sends some kind of scent throughout the room. He immediately set up the diffuser so I could see how nice it made the room smell. Now on the surface these were probably nice gifts—for someone else.
Jim had spent several months in my house, day in and day out. I already had a juicer; he’d seen me use it multiple times. So I was scratching my head over that one. But the scent diffuser told me he hadn’t listened to a word I’d said or didn’t know me at all. You see, years earlier I’d lost my sense of smell to a series of sinus surgeries—I can’t smell a damn thing! He knew this; I’d told him the story multiple times. In fact, every time he’d say, “You smell that? Is that gas?” or “Gee, something smells good. What are you cooking?” I’d remind him that I can’t smell anything. He even asked me one time why I never wore perfume, and I’d come out again with the explanation. So why he would give me a gift I could never possibly enjoy was just beyond me.
Because I was also taught some manners by my mother, I managed to squeak out a “thank you” for both of these, but that guy was gone shortly thereafter. I couldn’t imagine someone more clueless as to who I was, or someone who was hanging around for the wrong reasons. The diffuser ended up at Salvation Army and the juicer was sold on eBay.
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Then there was boyfriend Sam. We stayed together for several years and for the most part did fairly well in the gift-giving department. But one year he really nailed me with a doozy.
It always drove him crazy that I didn’t own a bathroom scale. I hadn’t owned one since my previous divorce; it never occurred to me that I needed to restock with a new one. I never weighed myself, whereas he weighed himself every morning, and kept track of the changes on a spreadsheet.
On Christmas morning, along with the plethora of gifts opened, there was an unusually heavy one for me in a large box. Upon opening it, what did I find but…a bathroom scale! But not any bathroom scale…his old bathroom scale! He goes,
“I bought myself a new one, all fancy with a digital readout. This is my old one. Now you’ve got one for yourself!” He’s grinning at me, like “Wasn’t that a great idea?”
I thought to myself, “Wow. At least Mom’s medicine cabinet was brand new. I’ll bet she’s busting a gut right now, watching me open a used bathroom scale on Christmas morning.”
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And then there’s me. To be fair, I’ve made my own false moves when it comes to gift giving. There was one very big fubar that I’m still paying for, 12 years later.
About 3 years into dating Sam, I was stumped as to what to get him for Christmas. One of the things I really liked about him was that he was a true cat lover, something that’s hard to find in men these days. He liked my two Chihuahuas well enough, but he loved my cat Tigger.
But he didn’t have his own cat at the time. And he was particular—he said he wanted his next cat to be an orange cat. So I got a fantastic idea in early December: I would get him an orange tabby kitten! Disregarding all the advice I’d read about how it’s a bad idea to give a pet for the holidays (because I knew he would make a great pet parent), I went to our local Humane Society to see if they had any orange or orange tabby cats in residence.
I was in luck! Just that morning a beautiful, long-haired orange kitty had been released to their care. They had named her Fiona, and she was about 8 months old. She was a bit shy but seemed to be very sweet; she let me pick her up and handle her, always a good sign. I immediately filled out the adoption papers, paid the fee, and arranged for them to hold her until December 24. In the meantime, they were going to get her spayed.
After leaving the Humane Society, I ran around town buying the rest of the gift: kitten food, a litter box and litter, some toys, a bed, and anything else I thought Sam might need. I was excited; this was coming together nicely.
Sam came over that same night for dinner. The first thing he said when he walked in the door was, “You’re not going to believe what happened today. Remember that one of my renters passed away? [An elderly woman rented one of the apartments he owned.] Well, her kids came by to clear out her apartment. They moved out all her stuff, but abandoned her two cats!! They just drove away and left them standing there in the parking lot! Who does that?! And even worse, it looks like one of them is pregnant.”
“Oh, wow,” I said, as my heart sank. As he regaled the whole thing to me, and his angst over how cruel and stupid some people were, and now he’s got to deal with these cats, he ended up by saying, “I think I’ve just inherited two cats.” He was kind-hearted enough that there was no way he was going to let those cats suffer.
Then I said, “Well, in turn, you’re not going to believe what I did today.” I told him about my great idea for a Christmas gift for him, realizing I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer because he was now in this dilemma. He was as shocked by this as he was by finding out he was the new owner of two abandoned cats. It was just too much to deal with.
I asked him: what did he want to do? Did he want to visit Fiona at the Humane Society before he decided? After all, she was the orange cat of his dreams. He agreed to go there with me the next day to take a look. But by the next day, even though he did go and meet Fiona in person, his mind was pretty well made up. He needed to do the right thing and take care of the two cats that had been dropped in his lap. He couldn’t just have Animal Control pick them up (a death warrant in that town) or send them out onto the streets to fend for themselves.
That left what to do about Fiona. Knowing how animal shelters struggle to place the animals in their care, I didn’t feel right going back to them and saying, “Sorry! False alarm! We’re not going to take this one after all.” I just couldn’t do it to them. I ended up adopting Fiona myself, and she’s still with me 12 years later. She’s turned out to have the sweetest personality, so I don’t regret that decision. But I had to deal with her and Tigger for the rest of Tigger’s life—she hated that interloper who dared to set foot in her kingdom.
I learned a valuable lesson about trying to give a pet to someone as a gift: bad idea. Among other things, you may end up with it yourself.
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If you have any stories of turkeys, bombs, lead balloons, white elephants, or other juicy stories of gifts that should never have been given, please share them in the Comments below!
