Me and my extended family have begun a tradition of giving each other silly joke gifts instead of serious ones.

• My father in law doesn’t drink alcohol so I got him “alcohol-free” beer. It was just an empty beer bottle. Technically alcohol-free!
• a couple of days before Christmas, my husband came back from doing the grocery shopping. I stole most of the non-perishable items when he wasn’t looking, wrapped them, and put them under the tree. He thought I was a mind reader and gotten him exactly what he was planning to buy for himself until he saw them all together and realized it was his own shopping.
• I went to a dollar store and just picked out anything with badly translated English and distributed them as appropriate to pad out numbers. One of them was a tiny plastic chopping board that claimed to be “high tech” and for “professionals”. Another was a roll of duct tape. There was also a pack of serviettes that had “serves you right!” in bright colors on the front. Anything that was silly and cheap but would still would see some use.
• I have a vegan sibling-in-law. A couple of years ago, we were joking about how plant-based chocolate treats for dogs were cheaper than the ones for humans. I think they’ve safely forgotten about that conversation now so this year I’m going to give them a little treat.
• I think at one point I just wrapped a big box of packing peanuts with absolutely nothing else inside. I vaguely recall adding some rocks for extra weight in a gift somewhere, might have been that one.

Some of these would not have been funny at all if my family hadn’t already been expecting shenanigans instead of real gifts, so keep your audience in mind!

The reason we started doing this was because our family stopped getting each other gifts many years ago and everyone enjoyed the lack of stress and being able to focus on quality time. And then my husband and I had a kid, and of course everyone wanted to buy her gifts. But we didn’t want her to be the only one with gifts under the tree and develop some kind of weird complex about it, so these playful low-stakes gifts to each other were our solution.

This one is probably out of date now with smart TVs and few people using cable, but one of those jumbo TV remotes for people with poor eyesight/motor difficulties.

Alcohol

Sexy calendar with 13 pictures of you.

I’ve given my SO leaves, rocks, and sticks like a bird making a nest. It makes her chuckle. We have a strange relationship.

Depending on the audience, there are cute little plush things, Giant Microbes, which have a line of sexual transmitted diseases. If you get one for an SO, they can say, “13esq gave me chlamydia for Christmas…”

Other good joke gifts can come from any inside joke that you may have with your SO, so these are very situational. At one point, I had joked that my SO was a sugar mama because she was paying for something expensive for us. I later got her a t-shirt for a candy called Sugar Mama.

On one date, we were the only ones dining at an outside patio at a nicer Italian restaurant. We had ordered wood fire pizzas. Anyway, a very large rat came to visit the patio, and we had joked about it at the time, even naming the rat. I later gave her an ornament of a felt rat holding a pizza slice (which is apparently a thing).

I can’t think of any others right now, but I love giving little joke gifts to people along with real ones.

M41A Pulse Rifle: 10mm with 30mm over-under pump action grenade launcher.

I have an old set of joke boxes I bought from The Onion ages ago that are really fun to put an actual present in and give to someone. For example, the Visorganizer: a small organizer pouch that clips onto the visor of your hat!

Another year the only thing my wife wanted was a new set of Airpods Pro. Now, for me, a very important part of a present is the surprise, so when she found a fairly large box under the tree, she figured she had gotten something else. Until she opened the box and found another wrapped gift inside. And another inside that, and another, and another… And finally at the end a small gift bag with the Airpods in 😁

A positive pregnancy test.

I once received a 20kg salami. Quite the surprise and very memorable. It’s a fermented product, so stores well.

Helped my dad wrap a box in about an inch of duct tape (which was then gift wrapped) for a cousin’s Christmas present. The box was full of packing peanuts and had a false bottom with a gift card underneath. At no point had we stopped to consider whether or not it could be opened again (it took a long time to get it open lol).

My dad was going grey, so my brother bought him ‘just for men’ hair dye, which he opened at the Christmas dinner table with the entire family. He was about 9. We still laugh about it.

In our teens me and my friend gave each other random items that had really dumb picture of the person who was giving the gift. T-shirts, mugs etc.

One of those pillows that looks like an inflating phone battery.

Better idea: 3"*4" Magnetic viewing film, stored in a thoughtfuk card, which is wrapped in a box with 6"*6" thermochromatic film, which is itself is wrapped in a box with a roll of glow in the dark tape, and then given to them with another thoughtful card that holds a gift card to somewhere you think they would like. Basically a nesting set of tiny cool things that all cost about as much as the wrapping paper they are in.

20 lbs of foot long nails.

Could go with a box full of spring loaded snakes.