Silly gifts (makes a change from egg-slicers!)

I received a thoroughly useless "secret santa" last year at work in one of those games where everyone brings an unlabelled wrapped gift and each person present chooses a parcel. Then you play a game where under certain conditions you can steal/swap someone else's present if you like it better than yours. Needless to say I got stuck with mine - a ceramic money box which you have to smash to get the money out. I'm hoping to draw someone I don't like much in this year's secret santa in order to get rid of it! I considered taking it to the charity shop but thought it might just clutter up their shelves and no-one would want it! I wouldn't dream of giving it to a friend. Perhaps the person who brought it last year received it in similar circumstances.

Keriku. I think that is a great idea . So everyone could have some fun and not have to spend much on things that people really don't want. Ingenuity needed.

Narrowboatnan I have long wanted to summon up the courage to dye my hair exactly that colour! A wig would do the trick without the angst. Perfect! Thankyou...

I was wandering round Amazon the other week, as you do, (!) and came across a bottle-stopper with a combination lock for about £2.50. It's for a friends' CP, as she is rather too fond of wine, especially ours, when she comes to stay. We decant Sainsburys white Basic and she's never known the difference!

At my work we had a Secret Santa but you could only spend £1. Hilarious! We also have a Worst Christmas present competition with one old friend. We have to buy something truly hideous for no more than £5. My sons love hunting down gruesome artefacts. One year our friends gave us lurid plastic light up fibre optic flowers - they won that year! On a more serious note, we have a large family and decided among us to cut out the kids when they reach a certain age. Christmas should be a pleasure, not a time to get into debt!

This, as modelled by my DGS

Eglantine19

My MIL once gave me two odd earrings. They were almost the same and as she said, they were a bargain!

How funny! My MIL once gave me an odd pair too! I wonder if they match with yours?! (Never worn!)

nellgwin ... that's a shocker! Mind you, my dear mum did give me baking trays on my 40th. I was newly divorced and rather sorry for myself - and quietly hopeful of a little spoiling ... I think it is partly a generational thing, she was surprised at my apparent lack of enthusiasm! Ah well, as she said at they would at the point of giving, they 'came in'!

My ex husband had a draw full of useless gifts such as key rings ,single tablet pots, which he would wrap Christmas day when I would ask were my present was.
So one year a good friend had a quiet word with him and he actually bought me a present.An ironing board. Hence one of the reasons he's now my ex.

Craftycat hoover ... My DH needed 'training in' over such matters as he came from a home where that kind of gift giving was acceptable ...tch ... l think l have won out because l am 'cheap to keep' ... Small presents are fine by me as long as there is some spoiling

I can't remember. Never had an egg slicer, as I don't like eggs...
But when DH turned 60, we had just bought the field behind our house from a local farmer. DH had worked hard and was turning it into a garden/vegetable "patch". I couldn't think of what to give him - came up with a load of horse manure from a friend of a friend. He was shoveling it all day! he loved it!

My best friend bought me a rubbery horse's head to wear. We did get some funny pics, such as wearing a wet suit and horses head and swimming in the sea, horse looking at a sunset on a cliff top, horse looking out at the view through a caravan window.......... Childish but cheered us up no end.

I love my egg slicer, newly bought from that Swedish shop to replace the old one which my daughter used as a child as a harp!! Turn the egg 90 degrees, slice again, and you have instant chopped egg.

My ex-H was hopeless when choosing Xmas presents for me. I had a chip cutter as a main gift, but sadly it was not meant to be a silly gift, he just always chose something useful!

Before downsizing we lived in an old farmhouse which had a septic tank. This occasionally/frequently got 'clogged' and I would spend ages trying to flush it clean with a pressure hose.. BIG SURPRISE,one Christmas I was given (by DH) drain clearing rods for my personal use! DH never used them in 7years.

Sorry i meant pot

My husband once bought me a pot of ginger marmalade and a poy to put it in for xmas and was surprised by the look on my face

I love silly presents, whether I'm giving them or receiving them. I very rarely give to charity on somebody else's behalf, since it can all too easily be seen as a form of virtue-signalling, but occasionally do so for wedding anniversary celebrations, for instance, if people have said explicitly that they don't want presents. In those cases I will often give a wee potted cyclamen or similar, along with the card.

My requirements for a good 'silly' stocking filler are that it should be small, inexpensive, and most importantly should be something that the recipient will enjoy receiving, and not a tease. I wouldn't give someone sugar tongs if I knew they had diabetes, nor an egg cup to someone who I knew didn't like eggs. But I have given crystal growing kits like the ones you can but as gifts in the Science Museum gift shop, paper flowers that will open and 'bloom' in water, a mini Zen garden with sand, miniature rocks and s tiny rake, or a mini Stonehenge to build, or cracker-sized puzzles (15 tiles to fit into a 4x4 square etc). In practice I only give silly presents to people whose tastes I know, because I don't want to risk hurting their feelings. Mind you, that can be hard. I'm much too old now to be offended if I get toiletries, but when I was younger and had less confidence. I used to be afraid that they had been given as a not-do-subtle hint, but now I appreciate them, even if it's only because I don't have to think about where to put them, or about having to display them prominently when the giver comes to visit!

It could be me.

harrysgran we have a lovely if slightly eccentric neighbour who wears a plastic rain hood at the first sign of a black cloud.

I do stockings for all my family and my 90 year old FIL takes great delight in opening his stocking. He has had a kite in a box, mouth organ, stress ball, parachutist, balsa wood aeroplane to name a few and he saves them all. I was reminded two years ago he had been given him the same mouth organ before. I keep telling myself to write down what he has had but never do.

Cherrytree59, I live in the New Forest so often see deer run across the road all through the day. If I see one ahead I always take greater care as very often there will be some stragglers running behind a few seconds later.

I fill the family's own novelty crackers with inexpensive gifts along with a small chocolate ( the hat and joke are already included in the sets I buy) so, not only do I have to come up with different appropriate things every year, they have to be small enough too to fit inside! My daughters alternate between doing one for me or buying me a chocolate advent calendar so their task is much easier! Any suggestions would be much appreciated and I do keep my eyes open all year for suitable things.

For my young granddaughters this Christmas I have bought a wind up bath toy ( 15 months) and one of those singing birds which you fill with water and blow ( 6 years). Items I have bought in the past for adults are nail clippers, key ring fobs and colour identification coders, badges, a thing to put in a kettle to prevent limescale build up, novelty biscuit cutters etc.

£2-3 each is usually my maximum spend. If I get desperate, I shove a pair of pants or tights in there but they expect me to more inventive. The men are the most difficult to buy for, of course, but at least one of them loves cooking so I can usually find a small related item for him.

Flying lesson for my Mum when she was 67....she'd just had a successful triple bi pass which surprised her instructor a wee bit but she loved it.

We seem to excel in silly presents in our family. When elder son was 4 Dad gave him some money to buy my mothers day present. Off he went, very pleased with himself. On Mothering Sunday I had breakfast in bed and was presented with a wrapped gift. Didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I opened it to find an old fashioned scrubbing brush and a packet of pegs! Don't think I have ever been known to scrub a floor on my knees - perhaps he was just hinting that perhaps I should. Pegs and scrubbing brush were useful over the years.
And for Christmas one year my darling husband wrapped and presented me with a dustbin - because we needed one (it did have some non useful prezzies inside).