Worst gift you’ve ever gotten
Ok, the conversation is inevitable, so let’s just do this… What is the worst (or weirdest) holiday gift you’ve ever gotten? I’ll start. My grandmother once gave me a vest. With lions embroidered on it.
Ok, the conversation is inevitable, so let’s just do this…
What is the worst (or weirdest) holiday gift you’ve ever gotten?
I’ll start. My grandmother once gave me a vest. With lions embroidered on it.
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Valerie Catrow
Valerie Catrow is editor of RVAFamily, mother to a mop-topped first grader, and always really excited to go to bed.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
My in-laws once gave me a showerhead for Christmas that came as part of a two-pack. It was not my only gift from them, and the rest were lovely, but I wondered if they were trying to tell me something.
Ronco battery tester in a brown paper bag from CVS. Actually that has been the most useful gift. I’ve had it for 30 years and still test batteries with it.
My Grandma gave me a Starbucks gift set with different coffees and hot chocolate packets in it. I can’t have coffee or sugar.
When I was a teenager, my dad gave my brother and I each a smoke detector for our bedrooms. Our rooms were right next to one another and there was already a smoke detector in the hallway. He also gave my mom a rake for her birthday one year. Dad has never been the greatest gift-giver.
Yes, my grandmother used to give us a t-shirt of some state she had been to that year. LIke, “Montana” with a picture of a bear.
I also got a really crappy cassette tape tower in maybe 2000ish… Long after CDs had taken over.
My grandma gave me these weird gold sequined house slipper booties. I know can you imagine!? The best part is that she thought they were real shoes you wore outside of your house. My mom made me wear them to the movies on Christmas evening so she would not get upset. I was not pleased with the stares I received throughout the theater.
A box of “fun, jungle band-ads” to me, who is African-American from someone who was NOT African-American and not my buddy, as a “culturally-inspired gift.” Ugh.
My dad gave both his serious girlfriend (at the time) and me matching hat and scarf sets. Needless to say, she was furious.
This is not a personal experience but I know a family for which the grandmother’s gifts each year were something of twisted legend. The wife in the family once got ONE pair from a pack of day-of-the-week panties, and the grandmother split up the other pairs among the other women in the family (one got “Monday,” one got “Tuesday” and so on….)
I gave her a nice bottle of her fave perfume and a $150 massage gift certificate. She said she was going to get me XM Radio for my car. Instead, she gave me $12 worth of curry powder, Post-It notes, a Big Lots rice cooker that broke two months later, and no Christmas booty. I’d have been less disappointed if she gave me nothing.