Well folks it’s getting to that time of year again…have you done your Christmas shopping? One of my favourite parts of Christmas is being able to spoil my special people…I’ve always loved giving gifts, and I especially enjoy putting a huge amount of thought into what I’m going to buy. Some people are easy to buy for, mainly due to the size of the hints they drop from around September onwards. Others are more difficult but I enjoy a challenge so it’s all good.
I was laughing with my friend earlier when we compared notes on our best and worst ever presents…my boy has got better in recent years. I still tease him about the Christmas he presented me with Season 2 of ‘Lost’ on DVD – I hadn’t seen season one, but he had and was desperate to see the second. Poetic justice was duly served when it took at least a couple more years before the big secret was revealed, and when it was nobody understood it, including him 🙂
As my friend and I were chatting, it occurred to me that some of the really shit presents I’ve received over the years probably contained more of a message than I’d realised at the time. I mean, not in quite the same league as waking up with a horse’s head in my bed, but when I reflect on the presents and who they came from, there was definitely some passive aggressive gifting going on, I was just a bit too naive to clock it at the time.
A couple of years ago I got a ‘tangle tease’ hairbrush as my ‘Secret Santa’ gift at work – for those of you who haven’t seen them, they’re guaranteed to basically brush out a birds nest, and this was before they were really popular so some cheeky knacker had clearly gone out of their way to go looking for one. I felt like conducting some kind of interrogation to find out who thought that was funny, but since I work in human resources and we’re supposed to be nice people I decided that might not be my best ever idea.
Then there was the Christmas when my ex mother-in-law bought everyone in the family Christmas jumpers to wear to her annual Christmas Eve dinner…now I adore Christmas jumpers, they never fail to make me smile, and there were some lovely ones. Happy snowmen, jolly reindeers, robins and crackers. Mine? Biggest fucking Christmas pudding jumper you’ve ever seen. Bitch! Mind you I did get my own back the following day when a bit of nifty thinking and a swift re-wrap meant I was able to present her with her very own pre-read hardback copy of ‘The Sociopath Next Door’…sadly I suspect she was too dim to make the connection but it made me feel a bit better.
I’d love to think that over the years I haven’t committed any absolute howlers myself – well, all except maybe the Jackie annual I gave my best friend when we were about eight years old. I might have accidentally filled in the quiz about Donny Osmond before I wrapped it up, but it was only in pencil, and once I’d rubbed out my answers you could hardly tell. I guess it’s always possible that someone somewhere may be harbouring a long-standing resentment over an ill-chosen gift, but I hope not!
I shall keep my fingers crossed this year that Santa remembers my fondness for handbag tokens…can’t go wrong with those, right? 🙂
