I had married into a snooty family who came from a suburb with the local reputation of high incomes, country clubs, schools that can actually afford to give teachers proper supplies, and the property taxes that go with them all. It was no surprise to me by this time that they considered me beneath their class.

Two months before Christmas my husband was unceremoniously canned and things were tight. I'll be honest and say he had a history of being a jerk about gifts. My birthday and Christmas usually saw me skulking about the shops, hoping my friends or coworkers weren't around, then buying myself something and lying about it later. So this year it was Maybelline instead of Macy's which wasn't a big deal, since it's all really L'Oreal products anyway. However, we still had his annual family holiday show-off session to contend with.

In his sprawling family, the custom was that each person gets one name to shop for, and the limit in theory was $50.

Theories are designed for dispute, as you will see.

I drew his brother, Q. I'd call him Dick but that was reserved for the husband and his own holiday gift tradition with me. Q was probably the snobbiest of them all besides his mother. Because I was too far beneath him to connect, I knew little about him other than that he played the cello. So I found him this custom shirt that had the front designed like the front of a cello. It was nicely done and well within the range.

If only everyone had kept to the range! My heart sank as I watched people unwrap sports tickets, musical instruments, imported pottery, cashmere and leather.

And then Q got to my crappy Walmart gift bag and pulled out the shirt. I could actually see his nose wrinkle at it. He tossed it behind him on the back of the couch and focused his attention on the pricey Roots Canada hoodie his mother had given him, all the while loudly praising the elegance of other people's cashmere and leather.

I was so embarrassed I just wanted to walk into traffic.

That was my last Christmas with that family.

One Christmas, when I was about 7–8 years old, I’d bought my mother what I thought was a beautiful billfold. My grandma had taken me shopping and I’d picked it out. It was pink plastic with colorful flowers engraved/embossed on the front of it. I was really proud of it, and thought I’d made a great selection.

On Christmas morning, my mom was in a bad mood for I don’t know what reason. She didn’t seem enthusiastic about any of her gifts. When she opened the billfold I’d gotten for her, she looked at it as though it was something distasteful that I’d bought as a deliberately bad joke, and tossed it aside, saying she didn’t like it, or didn’t want something like that. I was really hurt. I don’t think she ever used the billfold, and never apologized to me for her reaction to it.

Unlike some of the other answers here, this was not typical of the way my mom ALWAYS behaved when she received gifts. Usually she was polite and gracious, even if she didn’t particularly like something.

But a couple years ago, for Christmas, I made her a necklace I thought she would like. I make jewelry, and decided to make her a treasure necklace incorporating Christian charms. She’s a hard-core Christian fundamentalist, but does like to wear jewelry. I thought my gift would be really unique and special to her.

I mailed it out to her (she lives over 2,000 miles away) and was eager to hear how she liked it. She didn’t mention it to me when we talked on the phone after Christmas, so I brought it up and asked her if she’d liked it. She said it was “nice” but wasn’t really her thing, and so had given it to her sister.

At work, people always do ‘Secret Santa’, where we draw a name out of a hat at random and have to buy that person a present. I always refuse to take part, because I hate Christmas shopping at the best of times, and never know what to buy people, even close friends. I find it stressful.

But one time literally everyone at my workplace was doing it except for me. The woman organizing it, whom I didn't like much as she was opinionated and bossy, kept hassling and hassling me, until I agreed to take part. “It will be fun,” everyone kept saying. Yeah, right.

The name I drew out of the hat was for another woman at work whom I didn't like. She was rude and uncouth. We had had disagreements at work many times. I sighed; it was typical that I had chosen her.

This woman was a bit of a drinker. The spending limit was only $10, so I couldn't really buy her much to drink, but on the Internet I found these things called Vodkalix. They are boozy lollipops with real-life edible insects inside. They had a choice of three: ants, worms, and a scorpion, and they were $10 each.

So I bought all three, at a special price of $20. It was more than double the spending limit, but I thought they were such a brilliant, unique present that I wanted to see her reaction to them.

I wrapped them up, and on they day of the present giving I sat near her so I could see her reaction when she saw the insects suspended in the lollipops.

She received her present, took the wrapping off, saw the shape without looking at it properly, saw it was a lollipop and said to the whole room: “Well, someone doesn't like me, they've just bought me some candies.” She then chucked them on the table.

I was genuinely heartbroken. I didn't like her, but I had taken ages deciding on something I thought she would get a kick out of, and she had humiliated me. I left the room and went back to my office.

A few minutes later, the person who had organized it who had begged me to join in, came to me in my office and said: “I can't believe that you just bought her lollipops.” I was angry at this point, but I said as politely as possible: “If she had bothered to look at them before mouthing off she would have seen what they were. I spent ages choosing them and they cost $20.”

Later on, after she opened them properly, she tried to backtrack and pretend she had been joking. But she hadn't. She was rude and ungrateful. The next year, they tried to get me to do Secret Santa again. I told them no chance.

My mother was a single parent, so Christmases were tough, but she always made sure there were presents under our tree. She would go without throughout the year to put money aside until just a few weeks before December.

One year, my brother and I asked for new mobile phones. This was a year or two before the advent of the smartphone. My mother made a note and when Christmas Day came we couldn’t wait to open our presents.

Our mother sat and watched us as we tore the wrapping off each present... There was one left. This was it. I was prepared for the elation I would feel when I saw the box.

The smile fell from my face. I was not elated but disappointed. I looked at my mother who had the biggest smile on her face. I smiled again, but I didn’t mean it.

A few hours later my mother was trying to figure out our new mobiles. She turned them on, set the date and time and handed them to us. She was still smiling. I took my new mobile and the rest of my presents to my room. I put my other presents aside, looked at my new mobile then threw it on my bed.

I was ungrateful because she had gotten the wrong one.

Fast forward thirteen years and I am now a mother. I have gone without so I can afford things for my son. My mother has told me stories of how she would make a bag of potatoes, a pack of bacon, and a tin of beans last an entire week or how she used to cut the feet off our baby grows to make them last a little longer.

When I look at my son I remember that Christmas and what my mother did to make sure it was the best. I will never be so ungrateful again.

We got my stepdaughters letter necklaces because they happened to be on sale at Walmart and my older stepdaughter was bringing a friend we knew pretty well so we picked her up a game at GameStop she had been wanting.

Well Christmas Eve comes and we give out the gifts. My oldest stepdaughter loved the necklace. My youngest stepdaughter, who didn’t want to be there but had been forced by her mother, frowned at it and said, “Well that’s a cheap piece of crap” and threw it out the window. My stepdaughter's friend was angry that all we got her was a video game, and demanded to know where her necklace was.

I was hurt. We could barely afford Christmas and tried our best but it wasn’t good enough. I got up, went to my daughter's nursery and cried while I held her.

It was me. I was a tomboy.

On Christmas morning, I opened a gift from my grandparents. It was a doll. I said “thank you for the doll" and put it aside.

My grandmother says “that's not JUST a doll. It's a Cabbage Patch Kid.”

And I look at the doll, and at my grandmother, and say again “thank you for the doll."

Turns out, that was the “must have" toy that year. And my grandmother had waited on line for hours for this doll. Only to get back on the end of the line to get another one for my cousin.

I can look back and see where she sacrificed a lot of time and a good deal of money. But I would have been way happier with a box of crayons or a Hot Wheels car.

The gift of a doll, ANY doll, just cinched the fact that she knew nothing about me. As I got older, she still made zero effort to learn who I was.

But she put on a good show. She looked good giving the hottest toy of the year to both her grandkids. And I came off as the bad guy, for not going crazy over the latest fad.

Keep in mind, I was three years old.

It was my stepdaughter. Christmas of 1997. It was our first Christmas together. My stepdaughter lived with us and was 14.

There was a new brand of sneakers on the market. They were expensive and cheaply made. Definitely not wearable for a Chicago winter. I knew she wanted a pair. I explained it wouldn’t be practical till spring. (The other problem was this kid was rough, I mean rough on shoes.)

I spent my lunch hours going to various stores buying her gifts. Her dad would shop in the evening. We kept all the gifts at our office and wrapped them there. We knew she would be looking for her presents. She was stunned when we brought everything home, already wrapped.

To be blunt, the kid made out like a bandit. Clothes, jewelry, makeup, stereo, CD’s. New tennis shoes that would hold up in snow. (And were a popular brand.) She tore into her gifts like a hot knife through butter.

At a certain point, my husband wandered out of the room. The minute he was out of hearing, her face switched to “sad” mode. She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by all her gifts. And putting on her sad face. I knew what was coming. So I asked, “What’s wrong?”.

Well, she replied, I didn’t get my shoes.

Ok. You didn’t get the shoes.

So you really want those shoes? Yes. I really do. And I didn’t get them. Sad face becomes more exaggerated.

Ok kid. Here is what we can do. We can return this (stereo), and this (I point to item of jewelry), and this and this. We can return these gifts, give you the money and you can buy the shoes. You will have just enough money to cover it.

Sad face turns to stunned face. Obviously this was not the answer she expected. I was suppose to be the easy mark.

She chose to keep her gifts. At a later point she received a pair of the super duper expensive shoes. She had wrecked them in about two months.

As a side note, she is now a mother of three. She has had the joy of dealing with this herself!

My ex-husband and I were married in 1982. That was during the period of time that “Nintendo” came out with a gaming console. My husband worked evenings and nights and often complained of missing his TV shows. I took that into consideration when Christmas shopping for him.

However, after I had shopped and purchased his gift, he informed me that he wanted a Nintendo. I told him I couldn’t afford one. He kept telling me that’s what he wanted. When Christmas was approaching, I wrapped his gift and put it under the tree. He’d pick it up and say, “I know this is my Nintendo.” I kept telling him it wasn’t and to please not get his hopes up because I couldn’t afford the Nintendo. He’d just laugh.

Christmas morning was spent with his parents. He grabbed that big package that I’d gotten for him and started yelling that he had a Nintendo. I kept telling him it wasn’t. He opened the box to find the portable transistor radio/television combo that I’d spent all my money on. He threw it across the room and stormed out. My in-laws were furious. I cried.

My dad, no matter what we would get him, would unwrap it, grunt a “how nice” or something similar, and throw the gift aside. He just didn’t care.

After awhile, family members stopped trying to please him. They’d give him gift certificates.

After he died in 2009 and I started clearing up his things in the condo, I went into the desk that was in his bedroom, and in one of the drawers I found gift certificates, most of them in the original envelopes with cards from the givers.

Hundreds of dollars of gift certificates, some dating back to the 1970’s, some for places like Wherehouse Records and Pickwick Books that no longer existed.

What really angered me was that some of the gift certificates were gifts from ME, given at a time when I was barely getting by financially. Some of them were from my younger brothers, from a time when scraping together $10 to buy a gift certificate was a real sacrifice.

My mother would have been ecstatic to have had some of those gift certificates. But he wouldn’t let her, he just shoved them in the desk drawer.

I went through the certificates, and the ones that were still valid were split among me and my brothers. About half of them were no longer valid.

It still makes me both sad and angry. People were trying to please him, to make him happy, and he just didn’t give a damn. Not even enough to tell people to stop getting him gift certificates, he didn’t want to use them.

”Ungrateful” is perhaps not a strong enough word to describe it.

One year at my former workplace, I joined in the Secret Santa. I thought it was going to be so much fun.

I decided to do a twelve days of Christmas theme so every day for twelve days I got my Secret Santa a small gift, and I included one of our workplace cards that you fill out and can win a prize package.

I put a little line of poetry for each day, like “On the sixth day of Christmas my coworker did for me…” And I’d write something nice I’d seen them do, so they’d feel like they were valued.

At the end I got her a bigger gift. The limit was ten dollars, but I obviously went over because I was enjoying it so much. I was having fun and I thought she was too.

On the ninth day a different coworker pulled me aside. She told me my gifts were very thoughtful, but that she’d overheard my Secret Santa telling people that whoever I was I “obviously had too much time on my hands” and then scorning my efforts.
It kind of put a damper on the fun.

She did, however, end up winning the prize pack our work offered that month, so in addition to the eighty or ninety dollars I’d spent, she won a $250 prize pack, for our ten dollar work Secret Santa.

So the limit was ten dollars and she ended up with about $340 worth of stuff, and twelve nice notes about her.

She also didn’t thank me or acknowledge me when she found out I was her Secret Santa, but I also think she knew I knew what she’d said.

I always say, gifts are about the giver as well as the receiver, so even if someone gets you a gift you don’t like, you need to consider the intentions of the person who gave it to you. Obviously she was not raised that way.

I designed my own cards using some photos I’d taken. These probably cost me more than store bought but I thought my relatives would like getting something I’d done and selected just for them.

My gift, since all my relatives at that point were adults, was a cassette tape. I and my (ex)wife recorded Christmas music we knew they all liked. By recorded, I mean we played it (me on guitar, she on keys) and did our own arrangements. My family is conservative so, not too Jazzy and definitely not any rock-n-roll versions. I thought they’d love it.

Wrong. Very Wrong. Dead Wrong. I should point out that we were in a position that year where we couldn’t travel home for Christmas. Of course we mailed the cards and then had the cassettes individually wrapped but delivered in one box to my parents. I should point out that it wasn’t one version either. My grandparents and parents got a more conservative arrangement of each song; my brothers got a bit more contemporary versions.

Christmas afternoon, I get a call from my mom. She starts with “If you guys didn’t have money to buy cards, you should have asked. Although I’m a bit surprised since you’re both working and you can buy a box of cards for less than $5 if you look around.

But if you didn’t have money for gifts, you should have just said so. None of us have any idea of what those tapes are all about or why you sent them. What exactly did you think we could do with them?”

Er … play them? “Well as I said, next year if you don’t have any money, please just say so. Unless you’re trying to tell us something, in which case we wish you’d just be honest, tell us what we did to upset you and why you didn’t send gifts.”

NEVER AGAIN!