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ORIGINAL: MadAxeman


At my local pub a good few years ago a Boxing Day tradition developed where we had to turn up wearing the worst of our Christmas gifted clothing.
Jumpers so luminously bad they could make a blind person wince, old mannish or childlike slippers with animal/cartoon motifs, those who received bundled packs of socks wore one of each in mismatched pairs.
Underwear had to be worn outside the trousers and terrible toiletries had to be squirted on to eyewatering excess, half the can or bottle of each applied to a nauseating level. The place would smell like a bordello in Rangoon.
Every year we would try to out do each other.
There's something life affirming about having a drink with a grown man wearing a Batman cape or Bart Simpson pyjamas borrowed from his son's stash, straining to contain his beer gut.

Amongst my closer friends this was taken to a more sarcastic level. Bald guys got 'My Little Hairdresser' type plastic hairdryers and combs from the £1 shop, fat blokes received skipping ropes. It was common to get a home made card with a tea bag inside 'I got you a drink' being the scrawled salutation.
Those considered mean with money might get a tube of KY Jelly
'because you're so tight'

My favourite gifting was to my brother a couple of years ago, when I used all the boxes and polystyrene chips accumulated during Christmas shopping and unwrapping that fitted inside one another like Russian dolls.

Each box was in a different sheet of paper, each revealed layer brought a sigh of frustration and the question 'is there anything actually in here?'
This took over an hour until finally he came to a smallish flat package.

He ripped it open to reveal a strip of cheap batteries and a tag saying
'gift not included'

He did manage a watery sneer and remarked
'but these will come in useful'

I reminded him of his soap on a rope prezzie, ate his last mince pie and left before he found out I had replaced the new ones with some that were dead.

Merry Christmas everyone.