no boys allowed in the room!!!!

yeah, they were stuff like valentines gifts and little things won out of that stuffed animal claw grabber thing at denny's. I had two consecutive bfs who swore they were the best at those things and they never let me down.

seriously! like it's a joke in my family about how boring the christmas gifts my mom gives us are. she'd sometimes feel bad when we joked about it, though. So one year I decided we'd turn it into a contest - The Most Boring Christmas Present contest - so it would be funny, which made mom feel better.

Winners of L family Most Boring Christmas Present contest:

5 lb plastic tub of mashed potato flakes
copy of previous year's IRS Publication 15 - Individual Income Tax Guide
plastic laundry basket
cardboard box

These relationships largely took place in south florida btw. xp

That is so excellent. cardboard box, lol. I'm always super psyched about the useful gifts I get because usually they are SO VERY USEFUL. My grandmother emails to ask exactly what we all want on any given occasion.

well, the cardboard box was a gift from dad to mom - and he had ordered something for her online, but he was new to the concept of online gift purchasing - so the gift hadn't arrived by christmas - so he wrapped a box approximately the size of the gift and put a note as to what should have been in the box. I think we had a semantic argument about what the gift "was" - whether the gift was the box + thing that should have been in the box or whether we should restrict it to the physical box. I think we decided that the gift was the cardboard box itself, just so there'd actually be a year when dad "won" the most boring christmas present contest.

The contest ended the year i regifted the 5 lb plastic tub of potato flakes back to my mom - so that item technically won twice

hahaha. this convo reminds me that I want to get better at giving gifts.

i also think that through the years, my mom has given me every promotional item given to their customers by American Ag Credit

my dad and step mom go to costco and get whatever they see that identifies as "for girls"

your parents actually go shopping together?

I get mad at my mother when she gives me things that are not pretty or useful, on the basis that she can't afford much so might as well spend it on something I actually *want*. We did not speak for six months because she sent me the most hideous 'soft' briefcase - choosing to escalate the argument by telling me this object was 'expensive' was not a winning rhetorical gambit on her part. Me: 'so you spent $500 on something that is actively embarrassing and not usable for work because of the active embarrassment factor and you want me to respect that? LOL, U GOT SOLD A PUP.'

My mom and her siblings have a tradition of re-gifting (hate that word) a really ugly porcelain milk jug in the shape of a rooster every few years. Seriously would've rather had Ugly Cock than the horrible briefcase.

yeah, I think so. I don't really see those parents often.

I think I would die if I didn't speak to my mom for 6 months.

i was really annoyed by the American Ag Credit duffel bag my mom gave me one year - but it's actually probably the most functional piece of luggage i own, and it will be what i pack all my stuff in and take on my first vacation in 10 years - to NYC next month

my mom would not let me not speak to her for 6 months - she'd start leaving an escalating series of phone messages of concern about my welfare, culminating in questions about whether i'd prefer burial or cremation

a cardboard box? sarahel your mom is hilarious

suzy, you're a tough customer.

I love my mom and her siblings's regifting traditions because both of their parents are dead now so any family "heirloom" no matter how tacky is reminiscent of days gone by and therefore much treasured by all even for its humor value. I like to think they've struck a good balance there.

my dad was the giver of the cardboard box. he was kinda sad when mom opened it and confusedly asked, "You got me a cardboard box for Christmas? I know I can and will use it, but ..."

xp And yes, sometimes that INCLUDES decorative boxes shaped like log cabins or something, that have been making the rounds for decades and probably have the original grandparent's handwriting still on them from Christmas 1978.

yeah - if you have a positive attitude towards that type of thing, it's kinda great - like for several years my mom's sister gave her picture frames for Christmas - every year, picture frames - and my mom doesn't really have a use for them - she didn't get butthurt over it, though. She approached it like a game - how do i get my sister to stop giving me picture frames - but without telling her, which would have made my aunt feel a bit silly, because she'd been giving my mom picture frames for years. So the next Christmas, my mom got her sister a picture frame, and after that mom received no more frames.

We love the Ugly Cock in our family. I think it was given to my uncle first, and sort of makes its rounds.

My mom is unhealthily close to my sister (a couple of years ago I wondered if they might be a bit co-dependent and got SCREAMED at, which I translated as a direct hit) and we can go two months without speaking if I do the 'let's not phone and see what happens' experiment. She runs a business with my sister and they are often on the phone for hours talking about whatever bullshit undereducated Republican voters talk about, and my sister's basket case of a husband.

We were both being really stubborn - this was in pre-Internet times - and I think she knew I was struggling to save for a Mac, so seeing an entire month's rent go up in ugly smoke made me angry enough to risk the whole You Ungrateful Child schtick. Me: 'ungrateful? Please shoot me when I am grateful for preventable ugly stuff, because that would be a REAL problem.'

Last Christmas gift for my mom was an Alvar Aalto dish, FYI. Small, tasteful, useful *and* sufficiently expensive.

is the cost of a gifts a "thing" in your family? it's something that some of my family gets concerned with - there's a definite income disparity between some family members, but we're very much a "give according to your means" type of family with "it's the thought that counts" as the main ideology behind gift-giving. One year i was totally broke, and gave my mom the entire set of D'Oyly Carte Gilbert & Sullivan records i'd gotten for free at my library job in college. And she was just as happy to get that - even knowing that it didn't cost me anything - than if i'd given her something i'd paid a bunch of $$ for.

We do not own a single flashlight.

sarahel, I like your family's sense of humor.

Last year for xmas, we agreed to go for simple, inexpensive gifts and my mom bought me a sage green sweater and a lavender henley shirt (for those who don't know me: not my style) that were approximately three sizes too small (and from a retailer that does not carry plus sizes, so no exchanging). She's seen me in the last five years and claims to like me, so I'm not too sure what all that was about.

oh, mothers. my mom is so weird about delusions about the kinds of clothing that will fit me. like, her old clothes, which are often adorable, but she is like half my size.

My mom used to only have style delusions but now she has size delusions, too. This year I'm asking for dish towels.

that's really weird, Jenny! (your mom's gifts to you) - the only clothing my parents feel comfortable giving me (as in, i'd appreciate the gift) is socks, and i'm the kind of person that buys socks that are all the same. But still, sometimes my dad will get me a "variety pack" of socks that are each different, because that seems like a "nicer" gift - and i generally don't have the heart to tell him - no, really, the only socks i wear are the World's Softest Socks in black - and not the thin knee-length ones - i'm sorry i'm so boring, but that's just the way i am.

i think when the end times come, i will hide underneath a large mass of dish towels - my mom gives me dish towels every year.

i take back the clothing thing though - i'm sure in the near future, i'll be the recipient of an American Ag Credit t-shirt

Hahah my mother just a few months ago sent me a trio of socks: three socks that are all related in prints/style but not exactly the same. I guess if you're a manic pixie dream girl, you're supposed to SWITCH IT UP and wear two of the three socks at a time in various color/pattern combinations. I was like, you're okay with getting these back, right?

Why is my built-in spell-check flagging "combinations"? Am I looking over a 4-leaf clover?

My mom sent me a package once that had a note on with a single sentence: 'it's not Christmas without UNDERWEAR, love MOM'.

Money spent on gifts being somehow 'not enough' only gets trotted out when we are fighting about something else, and never by me. I have a policy of response to that which is 'guess what? You're getting nothing next year and you can go around telling all your friends how unfair that is until they ask how you provoked it' and then there is much backing down. My mom often manufactures an argument with one or the other of us so she can say Christmas: Ruined and the non-argued-with daughter is encouraged to attend her pity party (I did not play along when my sister was 'responsible' for Christmas: Ruined two years back).

wow - that's a lot of drama over an occasion that's supposed to be happy! The only thing remotely close to dramatic in-fighting we had at Christmas was when my grandmother complained that certain family members not be allowed prominent solo verses during the traditional Christmas carol singing because their voices are horrible and they are constantly off-key

as adults, me and my cousins have reappropriated the "kiddie table" exile we faced as children, and remade the kiddie table - "the place to sit" - so the older generation will get jealous of the one person of their era that gets to sit with us.

my mother is the worst gift-giver in the entire world, ever since my childhood. there are only about 5 times in my whole life where she has gotten me a decent gift.

my mother-in-law, otoh, is FANTASTIC - she's made/bought me a lot of gorgeous jewelry, perfectly fitted to my tastes; last birthday i got an ipod; as a housewarming gift she gave me (us, i guess, but really me) this breathtakingly beautiful chip n dip set - which sounds lol but it's handmade, from a mixture of something like shattered glass and ceramic, in beautiful shades of green (i should take take a pic of it, it's so pretty and elegant).

i am a terrible giftgiver but i've just discovered the joys of bookmarking stuff on etsy when i come across things i think my friends/family would like.

that doesn't sound lol at all - it sounds super nice

i really should post a pic - it's one of the nicest 'decorative' things i've ever seen. i mean, i would never buy it for myself in a million years, 1. bc i'm pretty sure it was super expensive and 2. that's not the kind of thing i buy. but that is also what makes it such a great gift.

omg some of the wedding gifts we got... one is a lead crystal 'sculpture' filled with something like paint streaks, which i refer to as the Glass Uterus, due to it's shape O_o

i totally wanna see a pic of the Glass Uterus!

though i guess you could invite me over, and i could see it in person, lol

ok i will do photos tonight! i guess it's a 'nice' thing, if you like that kind of thing... it's just so far removed from my tastes. although it has grown on me a little. jordan had it in his carry-on luggage and it caused a bit of fluster with with security ppl bc it appeared as a blank (lead crystal).

xp but we're not neighbours anymore :/

we don't even live in the same county anymore!

do you live near the Target?

Just1ne, that uterus sounds like Murano glass.

Go look at Xmas 2008 refugee thread, that one was terrible. I'm home once a year and friends here have a sweepstakes for the *hour* the first fight happens (ie. '46 hours into the visit, FITE!' This year's winner is CARLOS'). My big sin is speaking to a cousin she's boycotting for insufficient desire to take her life advice. I've pointed out that she's the person with grudges and swerves in her life, not me, and they're adding up to 'guess who's the unreasonable one?'

Yeeeeeeah, conceptual-type art seems like a v risky gift, I gotta say.

It might grow on you. Or it might just be hideous.

xp sarah: we live a few blocks from del norte plaza - near the richmond target, which is fwiw a good target to go to if you don't like crowds.

lol the security lady at the airport, after we pulled it out, was all 'OMG THIS IS SOOOO BEAUTIFUL', she was so impressed!

I asked my mom for socks two years ago and she got me six pairs of nice wool socks... in Christmas colors and patterns. I tried explaining that in Chicago, we wear socks in months other than December but then she got all momguilty so I dropped it.

Dish towels all the way. Can never have too many dish towels, right sarahel?

we also got one of the carved wooden bride/groom figurines too - so cheap and ugly-looking.

but the best surprise gift we got was this antique bookend contraption; i can't reallly explain it better than that, but it's really beautiful, and i thought it was a really thoughtful gift from ppl we don't even know that well.

god i wish my mum would buy me something as useful as socks or dishtowels!

speaking of gifts: i just ordered some bulgari perfume from strawberrynet on a whim, bc it was on sale and i love the bulgari white. however i have no idea what this one is like, so if i don't like i'll send it to anyone (in the US) who would like it.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. My mom is generally A+ but she tries to make every Christmas Very Special and so on 12/23 when she realizes she hasn't done any shopping, she pays exorbitant overnight shipping rates for the first thing she spies in a random catalog.

xp this thread makes me really look forward to the holiday season.

I am too impatient to keep gifts in my closet until Christmas or whatever. I'll buy something that seems just right, and then I'll give it as a gift—happy March! Or something. I would rather give gifts because they seem well suited to the recipient rather than out of obligation. Last time I did that, I gave my mother a piece of jewelry that made her cry, because it was beautiful, and because it was personal and sentimental to her. I was so delighted when I found it that I knew I couldn't save it till Christmas. (http://www.etsy.com/transaction/8780267—Ihad it made into a lapel pin for her–Cala lilies were her wedding bouquet)

But then my mother gets butt hurt when I don't get her Christmas presents, so I end up getting an extra present for the actual holiday. I should just stash things away and be patient when it comes to my mother.

And then every holiday I have to dance around which gifts I hate the most, because I can't have her return everything. So I have a lot of pastel colored shirts that look like maternity wear, and various pullovers that are reminiscent of Muppets. (“It is… so soft! And what a color!”)

I'm sure when you can look up butthurt in the dictionary there will be a small Daguerrotype image of my mother, chain-smoking, as an illustration.

Jenny's word “momguilt” is a great mom–specific synonym.

My mum always buys me practical gifts, especially these days, as she knows I'm always broke and that I appreciate practical things. Also, her taste in clothes and understanding of my tastes is abysmal, even after all this time. I love her and I feel terrible when she picks out something that I know she put time into buying but is just so off-base.

Parents are pretty broke now too (close to retirement, mum not working) so I dont really expect anything - most fam just give me gift vouchers these days.