With the holiday season approaching, we can’t really tell you what you ought to buy for your loved ones. But we can give you some good examples of things you shouldn’t buy.
This piece is based on a Quora Question and an AskReddit thread. Links on the last page.
1/25. Jenny was a coworker of mine, but this was not some white elephant joke gift exchange. We usually didnt exchange gifts. One day after lunch she just handed me a tiny box, which she had carefully gift-wrapped.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, “its a severed raccoon penis bone.”
“Oh!” I replied, bewildered. I have eclectic taste and I guess Im into two of those three nouns, but I never expected to hear them all in the same sentence. “Does it mean something?”
“No.” She smiled. “I just saw it and thought youd like it.”
I opened it, and she wasnt lying. It was indeed a raccoons penis bone that she had found at a local herbal shop. Whatever message she was trying to send with that gift remains lost on me.
-Sahra Luke
2/25. When I was about 15, my parents walked into my room while I was asleep, shouting, “Merry Christmas!”, and placed a pack of Gatorade and pair of Joe Boxer pyjama pants on the floor. We’re a family that can’t spend much, so I wasn’t expecting any presents.
I thought that was the oddest pair of presents that I had ever received, but I was just happy because I loved Gatorade.
-Akia Vongdara
3/25. The weirdest Christmas gift I ever received was an inflatable sex doll.
My first Christmas after breaking up with my girlfriend, my bestie thought hed cheer me up by buying me a new girlfriend. Well, the jokes on him: I blew her up, borrowed a dress for her, and took her to my family Christmas dinner as my date.
Nobody seemed to find it as funny as I did.
-Alec Fane
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4/25. Mine was a coat hanger. A coat hanger stolen from a department store. Why not just give me a pet rock?
-Terisa Wright
5/25. One year, my uncle gave me a coconut, a mango and a pack of long, thin balloons. I still don’t really know why he chose to give me these…interesting…presents.
-Jack Cryer
6/25. At Christmas I once unwrapped a box of yellow #2 pencils. I must have looked a little disappointed because my mom told me to just wait and I’d see why Santa had brought them.
…It was because he also got me an electric pencil sharpener. INSANE PARTY, MOM.
-12INCHVOICES
7/25. My brother gave me a hand turkey that he had clearly drawn moments earlier for Christmas.
This would have been cute if he was 5 or something. He was 21 years old.
I framed it and gifted it back to him the next year.
-Picklefingers69
8/25. I received a Ziplock bag filled with cotton balls with the words “ghost poos” written on the side in sharpie.
-Thewrongbakedpotato
9/25. My one friend’s grandfather bought him the same belt every single Christmas. Every time he wrote a note that said “this is the belt you wanted last month!” He was going a bit senile at that point, and they didn’t want to say anything.
20 years and almost as many belts later, his grandfather passed away. Going through his journals looking for something to say at the funeral, they found out that the belt thing was just a joke. (continued…)
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He had accidentally ordered 200 identical belts from a company when he meant to check the box for two. When he called the company they told him just to keep them and he’ll have his account reimbursed.
So he just gave him THE SAME THING every year and pretended not to remember, knowing that no one would say anything. He wrote down my friends reactions as well, from his 10 year old confusion face and his dad whispering not to say anything, to his 30 year old sly grin of expectation.
This is the longest Christmas con I know of.
-Suitology
10/25. My mom is from Thailand and doesn’t really get the whole Christmas thing. Last year she got me sore throat medicine – I didn’t have a sore throat.
She also once got me around 50 tiny vacation mouth washes for my birthday. Someone told her kids these days drink them to get drunk and it was my 21st. They’ve actually come in handy and I use them from time to time – to freshen my breath, not to get drunk.
-Waffletits83
11/25. A rubber Hulk Hogan figurine (it looked like it was a Christmas ornament with the loop snipped off) glued to a very effeminate toy horse. An elderly friend of the family gave it to me and wouldn’t stop mentioning how “they are supposed to look like that; that’s how it came from the store! even though I didn’t voice any doubts.
It’s also kind of the best gift I ever got.
-thebrainfuggler
12/25. I once received a container full of real human teeth for Christmas. I can explain. (continued…)
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I was talking to my friend over the phone one day, and I randomly mentioned how I had to prepare for my pre-clinical class on extracted teeth. She took that very seriously and secretly asked her dad, whos a dentist, to collect extracted teeth for me over the next 6 months.
When I met her during Christmas that year, she gifted them to me. We had a good long laugh. Who would have thought a cute little innocent gift wrapped with pink ribbon was actually filled with real human pearlies.
Its always good to have one crazy friend who will do weird unexpected things.
-Cynthia Chan
13/25. The only present I got this one Christmas was a little light-up ball. You put your finger on the two metal tabs (or you and someone else, while holding other hands) and the ball lights up.
It wasn’t awful but it was underwhelming. After I had figured out what it was and how it worked and trying it with a few people, dad asks me if he can have a try and so I say sure. I pass him the ball and he immediately throws it on the ground, hard enough to break it.
“I thought it was a bouncy ball!” Some people.
-BloodChicken
14/25. The christmas after my mum died I got an alarm clock as my present.
Her husband (not my biological dad) said it was so I ‘might wake up in the morning now and actually contribute something to society. Merry Christmas to you too, Kevin.
-Kitten1504
15/25. My mother-in-law gave my 1 year old daughter her dead dog’s bed as a Christmas present. She said it was for my daughter’s naps.
-everyone1hatesme
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16/25. My husbands parents gifted him the deed to his own cemetery plot (one for me, too!). An expensive, but poorly-timed gift.
-Wienerwrld
17/25. My aunt insists on giving me Norton antivirus software. The kind you get in a box. She has gifted this to me on 4 separate holidays.
She’s funny about it though. Usually a card inside saying something along the lines of “given what you do with your computer…”
-Anonymous
18/25. My friend’s wife gave me a copy of “A Night Without Armor” – the book of poetry by Jewel.
Not that I actively dislike Jewel or anything, but it was so clearly something she saw on a discount gift rack last minute and said “yes, this is an object.”
-hickory_smoked
19/25. My husband got two rolls of pennies from my Grandma for Christmas.
That same year she gave my mom, a non-smoker, a tin of tobacco. When my mom complained she gave her a calendar that was 3 years old. My son got a hair brush wrapped in a Pringles can; he was two and cried because he really wanted the chips. I hit the jackpot – a bottle of vodka.
She always gave us weird gifts like it was her thing. Now that she’s gone I miss seeing what Christmas gifts she would be bringing. It was a good laugh.
-bonniejane1699
20/25. When I was a wee 7 years old, my grandmother placed a long skinny box with my name on it under the Christmas tree about a week before the holiday. For the next 7 days, my small self drooled over the idea of a play baby stroller folded up in that box, just waiting to be filled with various stuffed animals. (continued…)
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On that magical morning, I ripped the box open only to discover it was a VACUUM CLEANER. Not a toy one, either. A real life, serious, small vacuum cleaner.
She claimed that she thought it was a great idea because “I loved cleaning when I visited her house.”
That’s because you’re basically a hoarder and your house is disgusting, Granny.
-Christinagleas
21/25. One year, a girl I had just started dating bought me a feeder mouse that she named as a combination of her name and mine.
Mouse lasted longer than that relationship, and that poor bastard only lived 11 days.
-jarkmames
22/25. My brother got a pocket knife in a small cylinder package (old toilet paper roll) wrapped like candy. Excited, I started unwrapping mine that looked similar.
Underwear. All of it underwear.
And once a bathroom faucet. That is when I knew Childhood was over.
-MizSanguine
23/25. My mother-in-law gave me a full size bed to use for my son that her grandmother had just died in. Like two days prior. It even had bodily fluid stains from the corpse. But not to worry: they cleaned it with Lysol!
-goldenharmonica
24/25. My grandparents sent me an erotic novel about the gold rush. I was fourteen.
-Smallton
25/25. I got a waterbed for Christmas. Then, less than a week later, my mom decided to take it and give me her bed. Then, a month later, she gives the waterbed to her sister and gives me my old bed back minus the frame. So technically I got less than nothing for Christmas.
-masked9000
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