Dealing with unwanted Christmas gifts

BrandyGran

My daughter and I treated ourselves to afternoon tea in a posh hotel for our Xmas present to each other. Pianist playing Xmas tunes on a baby grand, delicious food and wonderful attention- it was the best present ever!! Try it!

That sounds brilliant BrandyGran 😜

Unwanted toiletries can be donated to your local Women's Refuge, as can items for children.
Often women arrive, with their children having escaped from an abusive relationship with nothing.

Same in our family as MOnica and if for some reason the gift wasn’t quite right or faulty, all receipts are kept and the problem would be sorted with a quick chat.

Aldom

In the little town where I live unwanted Christmas /birthday gifts are given to a local charity. The charity holds a New Year party for people with mental health difficulties and everyone receives a gift, using the unwanted gifts. These gifts bring great joy to the recipients.

This is a brilliant idea Aldom

I take unwanted presents to the town where my mum lives, and bring any she wants to regift back home with me to donate to charity shops here.

I think that the obligatory giving of Christmas presents has really got out of hand. It is mainly promoted by the media to boost sales in the high Street.
I would only give a present to who I know would appreciate something and not be so bad mannered and sell it on.
The true meaning of Christmas has escaped most of the population it would seem.

I usually keep unwanted gifts bc I would feel awful if I gave something away that someone had bought me. However, I once received a gift from someone who went on to treat me badly. It was a beautiful gift but I couldn't bear to keep it. I wrapped it in Christmas paper and sent it to the church, who were collecting Christmas presents to give to the homeless at the church's Christmas lunch. Someone would have received a wonderful surprise 😊

We had an unwanted gift this year. I will hand onto it for a while and then quietly donate it to a charity shop. I would not deliberately cause offence to the giver.

If someone takes the time and effortbto buy me a gift, even if it is not something i would get for myself then I smile say thank you and appreciate their effort. Never would I give it away or sell it or exchange it. To me that is just rude

My mother used to open a present, say “thank you, darling”, then immediately turn to someone else and say, “I don’t want/need/like this. Do you want it?”in front of the donor. I learned very quickly to give her something like chocolates, which she liked!

When my lovely (but low income) gran died , we found a little notebook listing every gift she'd ever been given , with a note beside each gift , with date , name and who she'd re-gifted it to. ...Not 'getting rid ' , but thriftiness and necessity, even if they were gifts she loved and could have used . It made us love her even more <3

Ditto.I was thinking same thing.🤣

It's so awkward , isn't it ?
It's the same every Christmas .
I've tried to suggest that it's not necessary to give gifts at Christmas , but my friends are insistent .

This year , I've received yet another make up palette which I know was a free sample from my friend's daughter .
The colours are totally wrong for me - far too dark . My skin is really fair .
Last year , the giver had a major mood over my gift .
I trailed round the shops trying to choose the right gift this year .
And I also received a brooch from another friend .
I don't like brooches and never wear them .

We have friends who organise concerts for charity twice a year in our local hall. Their raffle, which raises a good amount of money, is usually full of unwanted gifts of all kinds. Helpers have to check the sell by dates on the chocolates etc!

When we were clearing out MiLs house after she'd died we found a cupboard full of presents we'd given her. We were so sad. Will never know if they were put away because she didn't like them or because she treasured them and wanted to keep them safe.
Even sadder, we found all sorts of things she'd put away to keep for a 'best' that never came. Beautiful towels and bed linen still in their packaging etc.

I retired recently and was given two handbags as a presents, one by an individual and the other with a matching purse and scarf. I really wanted a silver bracelet, which the person who bought the presents was told by a friend of mine. They are lovely handbags but I will hardly use them as I prefer bags that would be hard to pick pocket. I couldn't give them away though

I bank transferred some money (not a lot) to my nephews mate who always visits him over xmas. The lad has done a few jobs for me in the past.

He asked nephew what to get me as a gift in return but there is nothing I want or need that is within his budget. Young man has an 8 year old daughter whom he sees once every 2 weeks and they both love games. I told nephew to say I appreciate the thought but would rather he spend the money on something for the child or a game they could both enjoy.

My dad’s birthday was four days after Christmas and his gifts were often unwanted Christmas presents. He always said he was fine with that as long as the giver took the effort to re wrap them. His sister didn’t - she’d just re-sellotape the Christmas paper.

A gift once given is the recipients to do with what they wish. Surely it is not up to the giver to decide where the gift ends up. The mother and daughter may have fared better if they had ensured the handbag was wanted by her in the first place. A handbag is a very personal choice. I don't agree with their actions at all.

Only one really unneeded gift this time- towels and I'd only recently bought some but i can see the thought behind it when person said why but as they are done up in a whole bale it seemed churlish to say anything so i kept quiet.might donate later though.

I also have one relative whom always gives me a clothing gift which looks like something she herself is regifting! So i keep and wear a bit but then charity shop after a year.

Since the 1970s in my family, when buying presents for adults we have all made sure that they could be exchanged and for how long after the date of purchase this service was offered.

When wrapping up the present we either included it in the parcel in a plain envelope and wrote "receipt if you wish to exchange this" on it if we were sending the parcel, or took it with us when we saw the person to give it to.

This way any gift that either was a duplicate, or not quite what one wanted could be returned.

In her latter years my mother tended to buy presents for others either in the equivelent of the pound shop or though ads where you couldn't exchange them. These we had no compunction about handing in to charity shops, on the assumption that someone would be glad of them.

I have sometimes bought something in a charity shop and given it as a present, but only if I was very sure the recipient would want it, and would not be offended when I said that it was bought in one of our local charity shops.

Secret Santa every year. I gift £10 maximum. Next year It will be charity shop gifts… no problem here with unwanted gifts.

The daughter would have been stupid to give the bag to a charity shop in their area...and also, was it a bespoke designer bag, i.e. the only one of the kind to exist in the whole, wide, world? Isn't it nasty for a mother and daughter to gang up on another daughter, though? The word gift is self-explanatory - no strings attached. I rather think that they felt they were being cute. They weren't.

I still have Xmas presents from last year I haven’t used! We asked family this year not to give presents but we give a bag of food goodies that could be enjoyed instead.

I hate the idea of 'wish lists' - so entitled! If someone presented me with a wish list, I'd make a point of NOT getting anything on it. I was brought up to believe that you should be grateful for any gift.