Bad Presents

‘Tis the season once again, not only to be jolly and overindulge, but to receive bad presents. The anticipation is high, a relative who often gives you a tenner stuffed in an envelope has given you a gift this year and you want to know what it is. You gingerly peel away the wrapping paper bit by bit to reveal disappointment – and a 50 Cent calendar.

Rubbish presents are now a fundamental part of Christmas and can cause endless confusion: are they carefully thought out gifts from a kind acquaintance who pays too much attention (“Now they have a lot of CDs and may need to transport them one day, I’ll get them CD wallets”) or from a well-intentioned person who stumbled into Poundland and blindly picked up the first thing they see?

One Christmas from years ago stands out in particular for the latter; a family friend was sent out to get presents for us and they were stunning – my six year old sister received Christmas-themed candles and I, clearly a huge fan at four years old, received a Coronation Street annual.

After a little research, I’ve found I’m not the only one on the receiving end of some truly terrible presents.

A close friend of mine was quite upset to receive a key ring from a cracker, especially as the stingy present giver happened to be her boyfriend. Needless to say they’re not together anymore.

Many friends felt that their gift-giver was somewhat out of touch with the recipient’s interests and were often more than a decade over or under their age group. In the over category, one girl was surprised to receive a quality Maeve Binchy novel from a boyfriend and in the under category another friend was surprised to find a Postman Pat money box under his tree at the tender age of 17.

It has to be said that some bad presents can be pretty useful; you shouldn’t run out of shower gels or deodorants too quickly with all those toiletry packs. Furthermore ,not everyone manages to get their five a day, so a yearly orange from your grandmother should help towards that.

Now I know that the reason rubbish presents came into existence (besides chronic ungratefulness) is the increased commercialisation of Christmas, the focus being more on presents and the aching need to get the right gift rather than on the birth of Jesus and the nativity story. Granted, CD wallets are likely to be quite useful at some point in your life, but I think the three wise men got it right with the gift of frankincense, myrrh and gold – even if you don’t find much use for it, you could certainly get a tidy profit from putting them on eBay with all the other bad presents you receive this year.

Happy ungrateful Christmas, FiX readers!

Kate Preston

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 11:07 am and is filed under Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.