Holiday gift giving is a time for thoughtful, somber reflection. You consider the important people in your life – family, friends, loved ones – and carefully consider what they like, what you like about them and how best to express your appreciation and affection. Then you attach a dollar value and wade into the retail swamp of the holiday-industrial complex.
Good times, good times. In my several decades navigating the holiday gift-giving season, I’ve been on both the giving and receiving end of many breathtakingly awful presents, bestowals and dubious gestures. Forthwith, a guide to bad gift ideas for the holiday season….
The Passive Aggressive Gift
A perennial holiday favorite, the Passive Aggressive Gift is a time-honored way for friends and family – often in-laws, it seems – to express their percolating displeasure with your lifestyle choices. Hair dye kits and household cleaning supplies are always nice. Gift certificates for weightloss programs, plastic surgery boutiques, detox centers – these are all valid choices.
But as always, it’s the personal touch that matters. One genre to consider is the self-help book. Buying someone else a self-help book is a genuinely confusing thing to do. It communicates a kind of hostile recursive logic: “You’re doing this wrong, and because I care about you, you really should fix it on your own.” It’s an elegant method of communicating barely sublimated contempt.
Some books to consider: “Winning Lotto/Lottery for Everyday Players” is a subtle way to express your opinion on a family member’s ultimate earning potential. Your new son-in-law, say! “Reading for Dummies” pretty much speaks for itself. Or for a spicier flavor of passive aggression, consider “More Joy: An Advanced Guide to Solo Sex.” (These are all actual books, by the way.)
The Vaguely Creepy Gift
That last title leads us to our next category, The Vaguely Creepy Gift, with which I have some personal experience. For Christmas of my senior year in high school, I received a curious envelope from a certain relative who shall remain nameless. Let’s just say her name rhymes with “Shmandma.” Inside was a certificate for a grave plot – already purchased – and a brochure with several delightful headstones and memorial markers to choose from. This wasn’t a joke, I was assured by my parents. “Shmandma,” you see, was an eminently practical woman, a survivor of the Great Depression, and she brooked little-to-no nonsense when it came to life’s pragmatic concerns. Fun gal, Shmandma. If you’re in the market for a creepy present idea, Google up the Morbid Anatomy Gift Shop. In addition to many alarming taxidermy specimens, you can order the “Babies in Jars” limited edition daguerreotype, a nice pair of 19th century hearse finials, or the lovely “Syphilis and Smallpox Wax Moulage Set.” Again, these are actual products. All major credit cards accepted.
The Time Bomb Gift
If you’re shopping for families with young children, remember that louder always equals better when considering musical instruments and electronic toys. Such items seem innocuous on Christmas morning, but gradually reveal their nature as time-delayed noise bombs as the new year takes hold. Also bear in mind that, with big-ticket items, you want to select for humongous and unwieldy playthings that require hours of assembly and/or several thousand dollars annually in D-cell batteries. Giant remote-control vehicles, say. I’m not saying my wife’s family specializes in these kinds of gifts, but I’m also not not saying it. Or this is always fun: Preschool kids, for some obscure evolutionary reason, absolutely love repetition. As far as they’re concerned, the only thing better than watching a DVD for the 20th time at maximum volume is watching it for the 800th time at maximum volume. As such, Barney the Dinosaur DVDs are essentially weapons. Having been on both the giving and receiving end, I can attest that this really is the nuclear option of bad gift giving.
The Astoundingly Cheap Gift
Also known as the It’s The Thought That Counts gift, these are the kinds of presents you can acquire at thrift shops, dollar stores, recycling centers or – in a pinch – from whatever is within arm’s length of wherever you’re sitting at gift-wrapping time. For my holiday giving dollar, nothing says “I love you, as far as you know” like office supplies. Rubber bands, paper clips, ballpoint pens – your recipient can’t deny the essential utility of these items. Old printer cartridges are a good option, too. If you really want to get crafty, gather up all those used and expired gift cards laying around the house and put them back in circulation. When they prove to be worthless, you can just blame hackers, or the banks, or Obama. For older gift-givers, here’s a handy option if you need a quick present for the grandkids. Salvation Army stores are usually crowded with outdated technology like 8-track tapes, VCRs and transistor radios. Dust these off, polish them up and present them with a flourish. When the young people start making the inevitable jokes (“What is this, Christmas, 1973?”), act confused and wounded and claim that you just can’t keep up with the young people today.
The Me Gift
Another true story: When we first moved to the area, I bought the missus a Durham Bulls season ticket package for Christmas. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was selfserving. But I did it anyway, because like many so red-blooded American males, I’m dim and inattentive and have no idea what I’m doing in the run-up to major holidays. The “season ticket incident,” as it’s now known around the house, was a personal failing, but I’m happy to say that I’m much, much better at gift-giving these days. This is primarily due to the fact that my wife, upon receiving the season ticket package, suggested I undertake an entirely un-merry and anatomically impossible holiday activity. As such, I cannot in good conscience recommend The Me Gift for the holidays, personal experience being what it is. But look – bad gift-giving is more an art than a science, ultimately. If you think you can get away with a self-serving gift idea, go for it. Terrible gift ideas can add texture to the holiday season, introducing exciting new vistas of interpersonal dynamics, lingering resentments and the possibility of blunt head trauma. And if you’re really, really stuck? Just give socks. Everybody needs socks.
