What is the best and worst Christmas present you have ever received?

Ah Christmas, time for giving and spending time with loved ones.

It’s a time for drinking copious amounts of alcohol and eating your weight in food.

It’s a time to battle the shops, trying in vain to find a present for someone who has everything.

A present for someone who returns everything you buy, and can do it without a receipt.

A present for someone who lives in gadget land and anything you buy is already so six months ago and they managed to find something better online, and overseas.

A present for someone who doesn’t want anything but beer, chocolate, and more chocolate.

So this year I get to escape it all and head overseas for India. My happy place.

I get to avoid unwrapping yet another useless piece of overpriced crap made in China.

So what’s the worst present you ever received?

My best worst year, I received:

* a bottle of waterbed conditioner
* a packet of Willy Wonka blackcurrant sugar lollies
* Kath and Kim DVDs (now I like the show but I would only watch it if there was nothing else on television), and
* the crème de la crème – a Jane Fonda mother daughter relationship book.

This was all I got for Christmas.

The presents I got for everyone else was absolutely fantastic that the words used were ‘awesome’ ‘you out did yourself this year’ and ‘this Christmas rocks!!’.

I decided to yell out

THIS IS THE WORST CHRISTMAS EVER!!

And then hit the Sangria punch and drank, and drank and drank all my troubles away. At 10am! It’s all good, it had juice and fruit in it so it wasn’t all bad.

From then on, I decided Christmas was going to be about eating, being merry and enjoying each other’s company. No more presents. I also made sure I never drove and that there was plenty of alcohol to go around.

Probably the main issue is an Italian Christmas is not as simple as one might think. Or is just my Italian Christmas that is filled with food, alcohol, food, unaddressed family issues and lots of screaming and yelling (and this is just us talking).

And the best part of Italian Christmas 2010 is that I’M NOT HERE FOR IT! And while I will miss my family and the beautiful lunch my mother cooks every year, I am looking forward to spending three weeks with my wonderful and fantastic friend, Samantha.

So what’s the best, and the worst present you have ever received?