Crap Christmas Presents?

Your Director of Studies is emailing you, the only chocolate left in the Celebrations tin is Bounty, and Santa’s elves are back working in their sweatshops. This can mean only one thing: Lent term is here and the shamelessly consumer-orientated winter festival that is Christmas is well and truly over.

Despite this, I’m willing to bet that a fair few of you got lumbered with the odd truly awful present. In fact, a recent survey commissioned by Gumtree found that, on average, each UK adult will be given two unwanted presents this year worth £48.81 each. But there’s no use crying over spilt milk – let’s see what we can do about this…

Sell them

£48.81 goes a long way when it comes to Sainsbury’s Basics Vodka, so get some flattering snaps of your unwanted stash and stick those bad boys right on eBay where they belong: vampirebabe91294 can’t wait to bid on the Twilight DVD you’re tragically discarding.

Go on, let her have it

Re-gift them

If Cat’s Piss, the new fragrance from Yves Saint Laurent, isn’t really doing it for you then there’s always the charitable option. Luckily for you, the girls who invented Valentine’s Day as an excuse to be unconditionally spoilt missed a trick: it comes less than two months after Christmas and the unwanted gifts are still lurking. Happy Valentine’s Day dear, enjoy your Deal or No Deal board game! Now how about that blow job?

Swap them

Did a few mates in college receive something equally sub-par? It’s never too late for a round of the nation’s favourite yule-tide method of making sure everyone gets a comical sex toy for under a fiver: Secret Santa. The drawback is that all the presents are shit, but it didn’t cost anyone anything and at least you’ve gotten rid of the JLS poster your little brother thought was a hilarious idea.

Recycle them

Forget going green and saving the planet, I’m talking about bop and swap costumes. Remember that hideous patterned jumper your mum thought was ‘trendy’? Golf pros and tennis hos. The tweed tie from Edinburgh Woollen Mill? Geeks. And that Hawaiian shirt? I’m afraid that’s bad taste whether you’re in the Mahal or not. You get the gist…

These chaps had the right idea

Donate them

The sensible option. There are plenty out there in much greater need than you or me, and a bit of good karma never goes amiss. There are several good causes represented by the charity shops in Cambridge: there’s Cancer Research UK on Regent Street, Mind on Burleigh Street (near the Grafton Centre), and for your unwanted books there’s an Oxfam Bookshop on Sidney Street.

Illustration by Runa Rudaya