What is the worst gift you've ever been given?

An engagement ring from the wrong Man.

On our first Christmas my husband gave me a pair of drug store picture frames. Guys, that’s why we HAVE to tell you what we want!

A Barbie doll for my 10th birthday :-\
I may be a girl, but Barbies aren’t my thing. My sister and I proceeded to strip it of its clothes, draw on it, amputate it and other things future serial killers would do to a Barbie doll.

@mrdh: I have a Barbie nightmare, as well. I did like Barbies, but one Christmas, I got three of the exact same Barbies! Not nearly as, well, violent, but a Barbie nightmare nonetheless!

A lovely mechanical pen and pencil set in a satin-lined case, from my former best friend.

The items had her monogram on them.

@gail: Wow, that’s one of the worst re-gifts I can possibly imagine. While I was reading, it didn’t seem so bad until I got to the monogramming part…

Christmas ornaments for Christmas.

@peedub: Well that’s pretty…pointless.

@flyaway; “If didn’t seem so bad until I got to the monogramming part…” My feelings, exactly. And I was young then and too embarrassed to mention it.

Tell me about it. It didn’t help that I was a teenager.

@Peedub: Why would anyone give Christmas ornaments to a teenager in the first place?

well, we all know how mature peedub is, they probably just thought that a fine young man as distinguished as he would embrace such a grown up gift!

Haha, who knows? I wanna say it was something Disney or a trinket done in needlepoint, but I could be embellishing.

Maybe it’s because my armpits smell like pine.

Bright blue Hawaiian shirt…with jumbo sailboats on it – from my Sister-in-law.

(and I live in Boston)

Not exactly a bad gift I’ve received, but seems like a good place to share this story. First I gotta set up the relationships. My wife has a half brother, Dustin. Dustin and my wife have the same father, but not the same mother. Dustin’s mother is Judy. Dustin is gay. He’s been with his significant other Paul for probably 7 or 8 years, maybe more. Judy is certifiably crazy, lazy, mean, stupid and selfish. We spend a lot of time with Dustin and Paul and one year we were asking what they wanted for Christmas. Paul started to tell us about the time he and Dustin (who have pretty much no money and had even less at the time of this story), bought Judy a $50 VCR for Christmas, which was a lot for them at the time. And Judy got them one of those tins of popcorn, you know the kind all the stores sell for $3 the day after Thanksgiving. Paul was getting pissed just telling the story…to this day he still gets viscerally angry about it.

As it happened, that year we were going to get them a DVD player, it was the one thing they both wanted. So, we got them the DVD player, but before we gave it to them, we opened the nice gifts they gave us, and then we gave Paul a tin of popcorn….one with pictures of kittens on it (we spent a long time looking for just the right tin). He got over it after he opened the DVD player. But the look on his face was well worth the $3 we spent on the popcorn tin.

This wasn’t my worst gift but my sister’s—she was about 15, and my stepmother crocheted her an orange, yellow, brown and white bikini—and didn’t line it. They (dad and stepmom) got upset when my sister wouldn’t try it on.

Creepy, I know!

For me it would have to be a tie between this and a really crappy plastic watch that broke about 5 minutes after the gift giver gave it to me. It broke in front of her. That…was awkward. As for the nunchucks, that was my brother’s idea of a great birthday gift. He actually wanted it for himself so he got it for me since he knew it would just go right back to him.

As an artist, my family likes to buy me those bookstore sketch “kits”. It is very annoying. But I smile, and say thank you and do a facepalm when I get home as my parents decend in to giggles as I add it to the growing pile.
(I usually do a card for them with the kit and put the rest in to storage. That, or use them for something unexpected because they’re better to break and build little stands for cooking sculptures than actually using them for their intended purpose.)
Anyone want some crappy art supplies? ;)

It was an expensive gift that I had carefully selected because I thought that the recipient would really like it. It became my worst gift when they wrapped it and gave it back to me two years later at Christmas, still unopened in its original box. They were clueless where it had originally come from.

^That sucks >:(

@steel: Man, that would really suck…

A VHS cassette of a cartoon about Jesus. It didn’t even work, my friends just found it at the take-it-or-leave-it at our local dump and thought it was hilarious.

A pet

(in which i didn’t want or
know how to care for.)

A Bible.

I got a box a dirt once! Literally. It did have a bulb to plant outdoors, but the ground is already frozen by Christmas