Also several years ago, my employer gave every employee a box of chocolate cherries for Christmas! Everyone except one girl HATED those things, so we all gave our boxes to her. She left work that day with her backseat and trunk stuffed with boxes of CCCs.
In 1977 I got a cut out of a watch from the Blue Book followed by news that my wife was gonna participate in the “sexual revolution”. Not exactly a funny gift but I survived and found my soul mate.
When I was 15 my friends and I went to the mall around Christmas to hang out. One of my friends decided to buy his mother’s gift in front of us. 15 year boys aren’t the best shoppers in the world. He bought his mother a candle shaped like a seal. It was over a foot long,it was light blue and white kind of like a marble and the wick was in the seal’s back.We laughed all the way home on the bus.25 years later we still laugh about it. God bless my friends mother. She put it on the TV proudly for at least a year.
Three small wooden boxes, all empty!
On the week before Christmas each year dad would begin to read aloud to us the Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. As characters would appear and reappear within the story he would change his voice to suit the role. "Marley was dead....Old Marley was as dead as a door nail," he would begin. Later his scariest voice would rattle out the sounds of Marley's tortured chains and the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Deep and fearsome were the ghosts and spirits (which by everyone's account were also the most fun to hear); but he reserved his most gentle and joyful voice for Tiny Tim. Some of us heard only parts of the story as we fell asleep before the evening reading was complete.
Dad believed in the idea expressed in the story that you could measure the goodness in a person by how they kept Christmas. Dad and Mom kept it very well, with lights, and yard displays and generosity and homemade eggnog and hard sauce for the plum pudding and a belief that someone watches over everyone.
If I could, I'd like to be in that little house in which Mom and Dad built upon their dreams and offered us freely the best they had to offer. I would like to be in the warmth and fall asleep on the floor with a gentle voice saying, "God Bless us everyone.
Leisure Suits.
Two of them.
One was ‘peach’ colored, the other was ‘powder blue’.
My mom bought them.
My favorite present? A Kimber .45
I gave it to myself. :)
Brian was in trouble. He forgot to get his wife a Christmas present!!!
His wife was really angry.
She told him - ‘Tomorrow morning, I expect to find a gift in the driveway that goes from 0 to 200 in less than 10 seconds,
AND IT BETTER BE THERE!!’
The next morning Brian got up early and left for work.
When his wife woke up she looked out the window and sure enough there was a box gift-wrapped in the middle of the driveway.
Confused, the wife put on her robe and ran out to the driveway, and brought the box back in the house.
She opened it and found a brand new bathroom scale.
Brian has been seen since.
The worst Christmas gift I ever received was a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt from my boyfriend of many years...to make matters worse, it was size XL and I am really petite! Since in past years he’d given me gifts of jewelry, it was pretty clear that the relationship was on it’s last legs!
I honestly would have preferred nothing. Which, as it turned out, was what I got. When I went to use it at the store after the New Year I found out it had expired on December 31.
We got the worst Christmas present from one of hubby’s employers. The first year he worked for that company everyone got a stale fruitcake- it was hard- no telling how old it was- and a card.
Things must have been better the next year- we got the same stale fruitcake, and a card- but this time there was a large bonus in the cards. It was funny because several employees didn’t bother to open the card the second year and then one guy’s wife opened theirs and found the money.
When I was very young, every year, relatives that I had never met would send me hankies, the cloth kind. I never used them, they sat in a drawer for years. I don’t like hankies, I have never used them, and the thought of using them is vaguely disgusting to me.
My brother-in-law got me a Bill Clinton pull string doll. It said all his trite things like, “It’s the economy, stupid!” and, “I feel your pain.”
I gave it to a Church yard sale.
St. Nicolas was dressed in a fur coat and looked like the real deal. He gave my Brother fruit and candy then after he told me I had been bad (go figure), proceeded to hand me sticks and a piece of coal...I cried and cried...
My parents must have thought that was hilarious. OTOH, the gifts left the next morning more than made up for it.
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