All I Didn’t Want for Christmas!

If you have to exchange gifts at Christmas in large extended families, drawing names is the lesser of two evils.  Fewer tasteless, outrageous gifts tantalize the hopeful.  Desperate relatives save the expense and time spent shopping for hideous gifts that hit the trash or wait to be regifted the next Christmas.

An optimist, I always tried to prepare my children before the gathering, knowing what awaited them. “You may get something you hate.  Just say ‘Thanks’ and be nice about it.  This isn’t the only gift you’ll get this year.”  I should have given them instructions they were more likely to follow. “Feel free to act like a jackass when you get a piece of crap!”  It’s even worse when the kid gets a “potato clock” and a cousin hits the jackpot!  In case you never saw one, a potato clock is a clock that is powered by two electrodes stuck in a potato, just what every seven-year-old boy is dreaming of.  Don’t worry. His disappointment was relieved when his four-year-old sister opened her gift, a cap pistol.  She threw it at the Christmas tree and collapsed bawling on the floor.  I think somebody forgot whose name they had that year.  I didn’t even bother to try to make her thank the one who gave it.  What was the point?

Thankfully, we gave up this fine tradition several years ago, once everyone’s children had sufficiently embarrassed them.  It’s so much better now to just enjoy each other’s company without bringing home a token of their thoughtlessness and bad taste!

17 thoughts on “All I Didn’t Want for Christmas!”

  6. I stopped buying for the family years ago for two reasons:
    1. They never said thank you and
    2. I didn’t see them and had no idea of their interests, so didn’t waste my money.
    This year was a gift for my Mum (always), a tin of biscuits for the family, nail polish and a manicure set for my 14 year old niece, and money boxes for my great niece (3) and great great nephew (1 on Christmas Day).
    At family gatherings in the past, every person took a parcel up to the value of £x and put it in a sack on arrival (there was a separate sack for kids, but still one parcel each. If you have 4 kids, you put 4 parcels in etc). After dinner, everyone takes a parcel out and the fun is seeing who gets what. My sister loved the yellow plastic ducks and my brother in law got the whoopie cushion. I got the kiddie’s post office set, and Hubby had a paint by numbers. Note here: adult gifts were the maximum of £1.
    Have fun folks! :D

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