by Maria C Collins

Created on: September 27, 2009   Last Updated: November 05, 2009

One of the joys of Christmas is to give and receive presents. Hopefully, all the presents that you lovingly buy and wrap this Christmas will be gratefully received, and the ones you receive will be just what you wanted. However, spare a thought for those poor unwanted presents which will be returned to the shop, recycled, stuck in a drawer and never used, or sold on an online auction site a few days after Christmas.

In Britain a vast number of people - 31% - return at least one present to the shop, and several British newspapers reported after Christmas 2008 that 10% of presents are unwanted. Why do so many givers get it so wrong? Some presents may be just what the recipient wanted, but something the wrong size or color. These are the ones that will be taken back to the shop but exchanged for the same thing in the preferred size or color. Some gifts may be duplicates or perhaps elderly relatives may buy youngsters compact discs, or computer games which may be the wrong band's CD, or the wrong game, or perhaps the game is simply in the wrong format, these too may be exchanged for a similar item. Then there are those gifts which are totally unwanted by the recipient and are either returned for a cash refund, or sold, or given to a charity shop, or put away and forgotten, or some people even wrap them up and give them to someone else next year.

A YouGov poll of 1960 British people taken on behalf of eBay showed that 1.2 billion pounds (2.4 billion dollars at that time) was spent on unwanted Christmas presents. 49% of 18- to 34-year-olds would consider selling their unwanted Christmas gifts online. Even sadder was that the poll showed that 4% of the people who responded were going to throw their unwanted gifts away.

In 2007 (29 December) a Daily Mail Femail article reported that during Christmas day itself thousands of unwanted Christmas gifts were listed on eBay. The same article gave interviews with various people who had listed their unwanted gifts on eBay. Some were just selling one or two gifts, but one person was selling over half her presents and another was selling 10 of her presents. Many of these unwanted presents were expensive designer named products - perhaps the more some people have, the more they want.

What makes the top ten list of the most unwanted presents varies each year, but in 2008 experts agree that Mamma Mia DVDs were the most popular, or unpopular, depending how you view the matter. Perhaps many people received more than one as gifts. In any case, on Christmas day 2008 scores of Mamma Mia DVDs were for sale on a gift recycling site and many more were on an online auction site.

The top ten unwanted gifts for all time would seem to include exercise bikes and gym memberships, the recipient will use them enthusiastically a couple of times and then life intervenes and good intentions fade a little and the enthusiasm tails off. It might be interesting to run a survey on how many exercise bikes are serving as clothes horses in bedrooms round the world. Perhaps that is the reason that there are always at least three exercise bikes at every car boot sale.

Novelty items are something people either love or hate, and among these novelty mugs seem to excite particular dislike.

The presents that make the top ten unwanted present list will vary each year. It depends on fashion and what is in or out that particular year. The way to really find out is to look at the online auction sites on the 26th of December and see what appears most regularly in the listings of all those poor unwanted presents. Just remember that one person's unwanted present is another's pride and joy.

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