Let me present my true dilemma
ICAN’T stand all those lists of Christmas gift suggestions. It’s fine if you want to spend $200 on a Tom Dixon hexagon copper candle for your “hopeless romantic”, “hip teen” or “urban gardener”. But it’s not much good for those of us who need some more realistic gift options.
There’s never a category for what to give the cousin you haven’t seen since the ’80s but whose Facebook feed suggests is still in love with both stone-washed denim and Jon Bon Jovi.
Or how about your boyfriend’s dad who gives you a jar of chocolate peanuts every year – even though you’re anaphylactic?
What should you give your elderly aunt who buys you Playboy underwear because the bunnies are so cute?
There’s also the challenge of what to buy the office pest with wandering hands who happens to be your boss. And what can you pull out when friends pop in for a “quick drink” and hand you a pricey gift?
If you’re like me, you dash out of the room and grab anything that could pass the present test. And then you hand over a bottle of wine with a fancy label and hope they don’t shop at Aldi and realise it sells for $5.
Little wonder, then, that I’m more interested in the annoying, stupid and just plain bad gifts people give each other than the perfect presents.
Just who’s actually buying their partner a Slam Dunk Toilet Basketball so they will “never be bored in the bathroom again”?
A Quicken Online WillMaker kit?
Why not a Constipation Crisis Kit for people who don’t give a crap?
Or what about Emergency Underpants because it’s “better to be safe than soggy”?
Indeed, recent research from Nabo.com.au shows two-thirds of people don’t like some of the gifts they get at Christmas time.
Apparently, people are most likely to return diet or self-help books (not much good two weeks after New Year when the resolutions are long gone).
Chocolate is the most popular re-gifted present, so beware those Lindt balls that were half price at Woolies because they’ve already done the rounds of the school mums.
However, the study shows Tupperware and cleaning products are kept, even though people apparently dislike them.
You can even boast about your horrible holiday haul on websites such as whydidyoubuymethat.com.
That gem features such stinkers as the Justin Bieber alarm clock bought for a heavy metal fan and a book called What’s Your Poo Telling You?
Sometimes the problem is not the gift but the receiver. Giving a man who’s never shown any interest in fishing a tie that looks like a trout isn’t a great idea.
And steer clear of anything too practical such as deodorant, toothpaste and soap.
Or as one woman explained: “One Christmas my mum gave my sisters and me toilet bowl cleaner in our stockings. When asked about it, she said it was just a really good cleaner.” Yeah, sure.
Don’t forget that truly awful gifts can be quite illuminating. When your partner’s mother gives you a jewellery holder that has a body like Jessica Rabbit and rotating metal arms instead of a head, it should help you realise she doesn’t like you very much.
It goes to show that a bad present certainly is a gift that keeps on giving.
The worst gift I ever received was from my uni days, when I was given a few pairs of used underpants by my boyfriend’s mother.
I was going to wear them a few times then give them back to her so she could appreciate how useful the present was.
At times like that you have to remember, it’s the thought that counts.