What’s the best — and worst — Christmas gift you ever got? Here are some fun stories

Kathe Tanner
·6 min read

It was one of those dreaded lulls in conversation when your mind suddenly goes blank.

Flailing for a way to restart the discourse during a party, I latched onto sage advice I got from a friend years ago: “When you can’t think of anything else to say, ask a really dumb question.”

I blurted out, “What was the best Christmas present you ever got as a child?”

While people gave me some predictable answers: a wagon, an Atari, a bicycle, many of the guests couldn’t remember even one highlight gift. Hmmm ...

So, at another gathering, I went in another direction, asking “What was the worst Christmas present you ever got as a child?”

After I got some startled looks, people from the Central Coast and beyond began answering. Responses ranged from the wrong doll to a brother’s broken-down, secondhand bicycle when he got a new one.

A drum set that the recipient loved, but his parents (and their neighbors) hated.

A longed-for video game, but the only console was in his nasty brother’s room.

A hand-me-down outfit that the young girl had seen her friend wear often.

An orange, a toothbrush and some socks during lean years that the child didn’t understand … then.

The worst gift I got as kid? I don’t remember.

In fact, I can’t really remember many gifts I got when I was that young, good or bad, other than a book my mom wrote for me. I didn’t really appreciate it as a gift until I got older (more about it later).

All that begs a question

We all try so hard to select the perfect gifts for every recipient, especially the kids. Sometimes, though, our selection just bombs, like counterpoints to a Norman Rockwell holiday painting.

What SHOULD we give our children for Christmas?

My cousin Peg Hulsey forwarded to me a related post from 2021 by Melissa Fulenswider, a Texas bakery owner who had been agonizing over “what else I can get my kids for Christmas this year. We have some presents under the tree but NOT ENOUGH!”

The last phrase stopped the author short.

“Then it struck me,” she wrote. “I don’t remember ONE SINGLE THING I got for Christmas when I was 6 years old. I don’t remember a specific toy (for the most part) that brought me an insurmountable amount of joy or feeling a certain level of admiration for a specific gift.

“But you know what I DO remember?” she added. “The laughter. The food. The Mariah Carey Christmas Album blasting from every speaker in the house. The Christmas movies we watched as a family the whole month of December. The hot chocolate. The reading of the birth of Jesus. Singing ‘Silent Night’ at the Christmas Eve service every year.”

Me, too, Melissa. Me, too.

Bum gifts received as adults can be more front of mind now

Still not satisfied, I tried again, online.

The best of the worst answers came from Laura Ruthemeyer, friend and former colleague.

Laura’d gotten “two from my ex-husband,” she wrote. “A leaf blower! I lived in a condo at the time, and was not the landscaper. And a set of golf clubs. I’d never golfed, before or since, but ‘luckily,’ they were exactly right for him. That’s the worst … a gift that the giver wants to use!”

Then, “from my ex-MIL, a full-length fur coat! GROSS!” Laura continued. “I lived in San Diego ... and it was a garage-sale score, she told me proudly.”

As an adult, I’ve received a few “are you serious?” gifts.

At the top of the list, from my older, conservative, male boss in Orange County many years ago: an electric razor and an electric toothbrush. Which would have been really insulting and cringy, except he gave the same gifts to everybody in the office, male or female!

Big sale at Sav-On Pharmacy, maybe?

I’ve wondered ever since if any of us had the nerve to tell him what a bizarre idea that was.

I’ve found some other awful candidates online, including, of course, the inevitable vacuum cleaner, but not one of those pricey robotic ones. A Weight Watcher’s membership and some diet pills. A Spam calendar. A $50 gift card for products at the workplace, with the funds deducted from the recipient’s paycheck.

A bottle of raccoon urine. Really?

The capper that a woman gave her husband on Christmas? Divorce papers.

This year is different

The holidays have morphed at the Tanner house, ever since our offspring grew up into adults on their own, with their own traditions to establish, and especially since three years ago, when my beloved husband Richard died. He was the glue who kept it all together, upbeat and merry.

The big parties are gone, and this year’s Christmas dinner for me and my son is apt to be Chinese food at Bamboo Bamboo, in honor of his dad, who loved that down-scaled tradition.

Not expecting any gifts, imagine my surprise when the mailman delivered a couple of packages on the same mid-December day.

The first held the Mee Heng Low cookbook I’d yearned over while I was writing a story in October about the legacy Chinese restaurant that had been in San Luis Obispo for nearly a century.

Former colleague Katy Budge saw my wistful Facebook plea for the book and kindly decided I’d get more use and pleasure out of it than she did.

What a thoughtful gift! Now I can re-create some of those memories at home.

A beloved cousin in Florida sent the second package from her new senior-housing digs. The box held three books from her mega-collection, which she was continuing to whittle down.

This little Christmas story was written decades ago by Andy Herrington, mother of Tribune columnist Kathe Tanner, who has pledged to update it so it can be published to inspire wonder in future generations of children. Herrington died in 1988.
This little Christmas story was written decades ago by Andy Herrington, mother of Tribune columnist Kathe Tanner, who has pledged to update it so it can be published to inspire wonder in future generations of children. Herrington died in 1988.

The soft-back was the limited-edition Christmas book my mom wrote when I was at the Santa-doubting stage as a child. I kept believing for years after that. Thanks, Mom! What a delightful gift of wonder! (And yes, as the book’s added foreward says, I’m updating it to be published later so other children can experience it.)

The second gift was a plain black binder holding a photocopy of a cookbook my mom wrote after spending years trailing around after her mom Kitty, scribbling down wonderful recipes that had only existed in my grandmother’s brain and muscle memory.

The priceless third treasure? My grandmother’s own frayed, stained, slightly wobbly loose-leaf binder packed with her handwritten recipes on lined paper alongside newspaper clippings, mostly from the 1970s.

Receiving this gift of an aging cookbook brought back many memories for columnist Kathe Tanner. The book had been compiled by her grandmother, who died in 1977.
Receiving this gift of an aging cookbook brought back many memories for columnist Kathe Tanner. The book had been compiled by her grandmother, who died in 1977.

I immediately recognized Ganny’s almost illegible writing. As I read the recipes, aromas from the past flooded my memory. I could almost taste those ground-almond cookies and the Washington Cream Pie.

Such wonderfully memorable gifts, ones I will never, ever forget and will always appreciate so much. Thank you, Pat, Erica and Katy.

Merry, merry, happy, happy, everybody! Remember, the most wonderful presents we can give each other are memories and wonderful times we spend together.