When it comes to gifts, sometimes the gift giver hits it out of the park and gets you exactly what you wanted (or maybe didn't even know you wanted). While other times, they get it all wrong and you hate...or, even worse, it ends up being the worst gift you ever got.
And recently, I stumbled upon an old Reddit thread that dealt with the latter. In it, a user (who has since deleted their account) asked, "What was the worst gift you received for Christmas?"
The conversation went viral as people chimed in with the dumbest, meanest, and just plain awfulest gifts they've ever gotten. Here are some of the top and best comments:
1. "When I still lived with my parents, they got me a Cards Against Humanity deck. Right after I opened it, they told me I’m not allowed to play it until I turn 18. I was 15 at the time."
2. "I am going to answer for my sister. When I was about 5 (making her 9), our uncles, aunts, and cousins asked me what my sister liked. I had no idea. All I knew was she liked to yell at me. So I dumbly replied that she liked hair ties. For Christmas that year, my sister received an assortment of an insanely high number, like 200 different hair ties, scrunchies, etc. She didn't let me live that down for a looong time."
3. "We used to have an ornithologist come to speak with our class once a fortnight because our primary school teacher was really into birds. So I learned a lot about birds. Except I wasn't really into birds, but my parents told everybody how cute it was that I knew so much about birds. For the next couple of birthdays and Christmases, all I got was bird books. So many books about birds. It's been 20 years, and I still absolutely hate birds."
4. "Book about how to take criticism, gifted to me by my mother-in-law."
5. "When I was 15, I really wanted a dog. My mom knew this. Cue Christmas morning: After we had opened other presents, my mom came back with one last one...it was a wrapped box with holes in the sides, bouncing/moving some, and puppy barks of cuteness."
6. "Toothpaste. Apparently it wasn't even that my breath stank; we were just out of toothpaste."
7. "My mom rarely cared what gift we might actually want or what our personal tastes were, and most often she would select a gift based on her own personal tastes. In the late '80s, she decided to buy me a stereo as the main/large gift, for whatever reason, and she selected a Fisher-Price (the children's toy brand) turntable. This is after CD players were invented, and of course nobody played records anymore."
8. "Years back, my cousin bought me a rifle case. I had never owned a gun or expressed interest in one. Just an empty rifle case."
9. "It was the first Christmas my father and current stepmother had together. Each of my stepsiblings got a new laptop, while I got a $20 gift card to McDonald's."
10. "My parents got me an acoustic guitar one Christmas. Problem: My brother was the one who asked for a guitar, not me. So essentially, my Christmas present was seeing my brother absolutely gutted. Meanwhile, I had to pretend that I was happy. Awkward."
11. "When I was in sixth grade in 1995, my parents got me a CD case. I didn’t have any CDs."
12. "Grandma got me a pair of jeans that were way too small with a card that read, 'Lose some weight, then maybe you will fit into these.' I was beyond furious, and our relationship was never the same. I didn't shed a tear when she passed away."
13. "I got piles and piles and piles of Star Trek toys when I was like 10 or something."
14. "My nonfavorite grandparents once gave me a Peter Parker doll when I was like 17. I mean a true doll, too. I could undress him if I so pleased. He didn't come with a Spidey costume, either, haha."
15. "My mom got me a roll of toilet paper with a bunch of lame jokes on it."
16. "My grandmother was a piece of work. One year, my two cousins and I were at her house for Christmas morning. All of the family was there, and there was a big, gorgeous pile of presents wrapped in the corner. We (my cousins and I) were promptly told that those gifts were for the other grandchildren. When we gave our grandma the blank stare of confused children, she hurried back into her room, threw an old ziplock bag down on the ground between us (full of half-used nail polish and broken jewelry) and told us, 'Merry Christmas.'"
17. "My little sister, who collected Beanie Babies, used to give me — someone who did not collect Beanie Babies — Beanie Babies."
18. "We are not friends anymore and haven't been for more than 10 years now. However, we were very, very close from ages 12 to 25. One Christmas, when we were 18, her present to me was a wrapped-up VHS tape of Wayne's World that I'd loaned her years before. She had forgotten that it was actually my copy, and I was now getting it back as she tried to pass it off as an actual gift."
19. "I got a fake beer can full of handkerchiefs when I was like 14."
20. "When I was about 10, my grandma sent presents from overseas for us to open. My brother opened his first, and it was a really cool, old-school toy. I opened mine, and it was a bunch of doilies. I literally cried, I was so disappointed. What the fuck was a 10-year-old supposed to do with doilies is beyond me. It's still a family joke: 'At least it's better than doilies.'"
21. "I got a gift card to a restaurant that had closed down in my city."
22. "Baby clothes. I wasn't pregnant, wasn't trying to be pregnant, had no children, and was quite slim, so there's no chance I even looked like maybe I was pregnant. Never plucked up the courage to ask for an explanation."
23. "Three individual socks. For my birthday in February, I received three more socks to complete what I assume was the pack of three pairs of standard unmarked gray, low-thread-count socks. These came from my aunt and uncle who regularly take six-week vacations around the globe."
24. "Slippers made out of menstrual pads, from my grandfather. I was 13 and humiliated. My grandfather was enthusiastic about gag gifts, but he did not read the room on this one."
25. And lastly: "My mom uses Christmas presents to tell us where she thinks we rank in the family. One year, she got me a woman's coat (I'm a middle-aged man). Another year, she got all the grandkids pajamas. She got me the same thing: children's pajamas, size small (I'm 6 feet 1 and almost 200 pounds)."
You can read the full thread of responses on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.