It’s Christmas! Everyone knows it’s the season of giving but is gift giving a skill that only some of us possess? We all have that perfect Christmas gift we’d love to receive but it doesn’t always pan out that way.
So AsiaOne decided it might be fun to reach out to our audience to find out more about their Christmas gift stories that were memorable, but for all the wrong reasons.
Forget the good, we wanted to find the bad, the ugly and everything in between, and our respondents did not disappoint.
Do you even know me?
Interestingly, a fair chunk of our respondents simply wanted a practical Christmas present.
Yasmeen, 24, would have been fine with either Dettol antiseptic liquid or snacks while socks or coasters would’ve appeased Jo.
As for Vanessa, she’s always game for some fun and enjoys the buzz of not knowing what’s inside a gift box beforehand.
Unfortunately, this has its hits and misses.
Someone clearly messed up when they decided that cartoon underwear was the perfect Christmas gift for Vanessa. The 29-year-old speculated that it’s the ones you’d often see at pasar malam stalls. Unsurprisingly, she threw it away.
Shanmuga, 19, might have an even stranger Christmas gift experience.
Back when she was a 16-year-old, Shanmuga received condoms as a Christmas present. She was not at all keen on exploring that world and it’s safe to say that the gift left her in a flustered state.
“I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it since I was single and didn’t have any interest in that stuff”, the teenager said.
Funnily enough, the condoms didn’t go straight to the bin.
“It sat in my drawer for a while before I gave it to my friend a year later.”
An unnamed respondent once received a heavily scented candle for Christmas. It was a present from a colleague which irked the giftee even more.
“It’s well known [in] the office that I’ve got an extremely sensitive nose and will sneeze at any slight weird fragrance.”
But maybe, the ultimate response we got was from a 27-year-old who only wanted to be known as Susan. Her worst Christmas gift was the lack of one from her ex-boyfriend.
There was no gift or card, and the “scum” did not even bring her out on Christmas, she said.
Yikes, clearly someone ended up on Santa’s naughty list.
No surprises please
Do you prefer to receive a surprise Christmas gift or to have your loved ones check in with you first?
42.9 per cent of our respondents went for the latter while only 19 per cent are keen on surprise gifts for Christmas.
Celest, Pradeep and Kahyin belong to the pro-surprise group as it’s generally “sweeter” to receive such gifts.
Celest and Kahyin provided almost identical answers with regard to how fun it can be to see loved ones buy gifts based on “their understanding [of] me”.
For the rest, it’s a matter of practicality and self-awareness.
They know how picky they can get and it’d be so wasteful to receive gifts that aren’t needed.
“I only like specific things [and] also, I don’t want to be wasteful. I only want people to buy what I need and not random frivolous things,” a 22-year-old Natalie explained.
You can almost hear the typical Singaporean-ness in the answers.
Merry Christmas!