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Here’s Every Present You’re Going to Get This Christmas

It’s not the same anymore, is it?

It's called the "N64 moment", though for me it happened with a Sega Saturn*: that moment, one precious Christmas in childhood, where you get the gift you always wanted and never expected. The Big Gift, the gift you've waited hours to open, through so many unwrapped Cadbury's Selection boxes and weird jigsaws from your nan, and you tear at the paper and there, gleaming, is an N64 – or a PS3, or an iPod, or a Barbie Dream House, or a scooter, or whatever it was for you – brand new, that scent of newness about it, both your parents standing over you, still nudging each other to remind themselves that Santa delivered you this present, and not them, saying, "Do you like it?" Saying, "Is it everything you dreamed of and more?"

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But now you are 25 and you have a load of student debt and you know what joints taste like and despair, too, and you're treading water, in a way, aren't you, both physically and in terms of your life and your career, and that relationship you always had but that died, and you thought it would be better than it is now, growing up, but it isn't, and you wonder whether you've ever really progressed from where you were aged 18, bright-eyed and excited to dive into the world and everything within it, to now, where you are, here, again, sleeping on mum's sofa – "We turned your room into a peace sanctuary for the dogs; we'll have to push two armchairs together and you can sleep on that" – for the holidays, because nothing is as good as it used to be and that includes Christmas. Are you going to get an N64 this year? You are not.

Here's all the shit you're going to get instead.

FROM YOUR MUM: EXTREMELY PRACTICAL GIFT PLUS "A LITTLE SOMETHING"

Your mum stopped getting you good gifts the year you left for university (do you remember what you got that year? It was an off-brand iPod speaker, a lamp and £200 in cash) and they've only been getting worse ever since, but this one really takes the cake: in a moment of middle-of-the-dark-November-night necessity you negotiated that, instead of a Christmas present this year, you would forgo all festive jollity if your mum just paid for an emergency plumber to come and fix the boiler in your share-flat, please mum, please I can see my breath, and now it's Christmas Day and your mum, £460 out of pocket because you were cold once, remembers.

"I've just got you a little thing," she says, "because obviously I got that radiator bled for you," but it's a decent-sized box and there's a little flutter of hope that your mum has come the fuck through – that, despite it all, Christmas is real, that she went and got you something brilliant, like that gourmet wok you wanted, or the North Face jacket you were saying about, or… – ah, no. "It's just a silly thing," she's saying, and that's how you end up spending the day in the George by ASDA elf dressing gown she got you, because if your mum buys you clothes for Christmas you have to wear them on Christmas Day, for that is the rules. "I can take it back if you don't like it," she's saying, two hours later as she meets you on the stairs, half-drunk and visibly miserable. Do you? Do you hate it? Is it really worth breaking this old woman's heart, this old woman who loves you and raised you, who bought you a fun £8 dressing gown for Christmas, who saved you in the dark of November, for just a bit of fun, just a festive laugh? "No," you choke, thinking of how much you really wanted a pair of Air Max this year. "It's great."

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FROM YOUR DAD: SOMETHING SO MUCH WEIRDER THAN YOU EVER COULD'VE THOUGHT

Your dad looks at the little displays marked "Secret Santa" that pop up in every shop and department store this time of year and chuckles to himself. "Secret Santa?" he's saying. "Amateurs." Secret Santa presents can go one of three ways: an elaborate £5 fart or shit joke (small vinyl turd emoji; whoopee cushion; something like that); a book of topical jokes (The Brexshit Book, 2016); or a small childhood toy that costs around £6 ("Ah, a hoola hoop. Yeah, thanks, yeah").

Your dad is 20, 30 levels above this shit. Your dad has taken joke presents and flipped them upside-down, inside-out. Your dad has inverted the joke present, then extrapolated it, spun it in a chamber until it is atoms, reassembled it. You open a package from your dad – you know it is from your dad because it is wrapped roughly in six layers of wrapping paper, every single edge of it taped down tight, and there is no label, just, faintly, in that red pen he uses to do his crosswords, your name written on the back. It's… OK, right – a pair of secateurs?

"Remember when you were a kid," he's saying, barely able to contain his laughter. "You had that T-shirt?" A T-shirt with some flowers on it, yeah. You wore it every day of your first holiday to Majorca. It was an extremely real T-shirt. Its vivid colours mark every treasured photograph from your childhood. Got torn up in the laundry one time when you were eight and you cried. "Right… secateurs!" your dad is still explaining, quite a few minutes later. "For flowers!" Ah, you see what's gone on here – in your absence, your dad has quietly gone fully mad.

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STOCKING: SHITSHOW

In my humble opinion, the stocking is the best bit of Christmas: the toys and gifts you get to guiltily indulge in before Christmas Proper, cosy and joyful in your bed, no tearing wrapping paper and any of that shit. Plus it's mainly stuffed with chocolate coins and Terry's oranges. W–where's the Terry's Chocolate Orange, mum? "I didn't think you liked those any more." Of course I fucking like them. Where are the chocolate coins? "I couldn't find anything this year!" Your stocking used to be a rolled up copy of the Beano, a chocolate Santa, a plastic flute. This year you've got a telephone book (???), a novelty ice cube tray and a tightly rolled up £5 note. Shitshow.

FROM YOUR UNCLE: YOUR UNCLE DOES NOT KNOW YOU AT ALL BUT HE DOES KNOW YOU HAVE KEYS

Your uncle hasn't really checked up on you and who you have become since you were 13, and so for the past half of your life he's just had you down as a big fan of Limp Bizkit, Xanga and moping, and buys for you accordingly. You unwrap your present and it's a Donnie Darko DVD with the "Two for £5!" label half peeled off. You peer inside a gift bag and see he's bought you some Harry Potter stationary because he still thinks you queue up at midnight for the books. This year, he's somehow outdone himself: a McLaren key fob that he absolutely got free with a polo shirt one time, gifted to you because "of that year you liked F1, remember?" Ah, yes: that one time he took you to the British Grand Prix and you tried really hard to be interested. Just add it on to the other key rings he got you last year, and the year before that one (one: small pewter shark fin guitar; two: Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, his head now separated from his body), and let that be that. Don't think about why it is that people at the hard end of their fifties have this unerring compulsion to embellish your keys.

AUNT: AN ABBEY ROAD MUG BECAUSE "YOU LIKE MUSIC"

"Oh, I never know what to get you," your aunt is saying, before you've even unscrunched the tissue paper she's stuffed this mug with, apologising before you've even had a chance to be disappointed. She's pointing at you vaguely with one hand now and gesticulating helplessly at your mum. "What do you buy them?" It's an Abbey Road mug, a mug with the Abbey Road album cover printed all around it and a small plastic submarine of jelly beans inside, which she has bought "because you like music". This, you cannot argue with. You do like music. Not the Beatles, exactly – you're more tropical house, now, aren't you; I saw that subtle change to your Soundcloud DJ bio – but yes, you like music. This is all you are to her: a faceless, depthless music-liker. She doesn't know you and you don't know her, but because of this blood clause between you, you have to share this yearly rigmarole, where she spends four weeks stressing before impulse-buying you an £8 mug in the Debenhams queue and giving it to you on Boxing Day. Really: isn't it your own fault for not being more interesting? Isn't it your own fault that this is the third Beatles mug you now own?

ANOTHER AUNT: SOMETHING BAFFLING FROM THE HOMEWARE SECTION OF A GARDEN CENTRE

Your other aunt, another aunt – so many aunts, aunts nested in doors and drawers, aunts popping out of cupboard and the cabinets – another aunt has given up on trying to delve your infinite depths and folds, and just buys Whatever the Fuck She Fucking Wants when she's at one of the 30 garden centres she visits each year, and that'll be your present, whether you like it or not. In a way, you respect her flex: ah, it's… oh, OK, a small pencil and pad set in a floral box and print. Thanks! And what have we got this year, a– OK, a £12 jar of jam and a small straw box with daffodil bulbs in it. Well, alright then! Thank you anyway! Shall we get drunk? And the answer, because she is a rich old auntie who loves to buy things at garden centres, is always: "yes".

Yeah it looks good but only about three of these are for you (Photo via color line)

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YOUR YOUNGER BROTHER HAS BOUGHT YOU A BOOK HE LIKED THAT YOU WILL NEVER READ AND, IN RETALIATION, YOU HAVE BOUGHT HIM A BOOK YOU LIKED BUT HE WILL NEVER READ

Try and fob me off with My Kind of Crazy will you, you little cunt? Get your fucking face round this hardback Knausgård and an award-nominated graphic novel about sex, then! Enjoy pretending to read that for my benefit and my benefit alone while I'm downstairs watching Nemo and eating all the good Quality St!

YOUR SMALL NEPHEW HAS DONE YOU A DELIGHTFUL HANDMADE CARD

Ah, your small, sweet nephew – the cuteness locus of the family since you grew up, since everyone stopped caring about you and your excitement, you noticed a certain tarnish on Christmas the first year you started crying mid-opening the presents and nobody really cared because you were 15 – has made you his present this year, because he is a tiny funds-less child! Ha, ha, ha. Aww. Okay so it— ah, right. A large sheet of A3 paper with a big painting of a dinosaur on. "He spent ages on it," your sister's whispering. "He thought you could put it up?" Ha ha, yeah, sure. Only not in the front room, obviously, because you share that with six other people. And not on the fridge, either, because the fridge is covered with a load of old decaying letter-shaped fridge magnets and a small ceramic model of a dish of paella someone bought back from a holiday in Spain. And, I mean… I mean, obviously you can't put it in your room, can you, because it's not… it doesn't actually look good. You think about that tight space under your bed and how you could maybe stash it there, among the old hairdryers and all the notebooks you used at university. "Do you like it?" your little nephew is saying, and you look at him – he's such a pure, beautiful child, such large innocent eyes, those curly little locks – and say, "Yes, mate!" and "Thank you!" and, when nobody is looking, stash it in the big binbag full of wrapping paper someone's already started putting out. When he is older, he'll know. When he is older – when he is paying £600 a month to live in a single room in a flatshare – he'll understand the struggle of having no physical room for sentimental things. Then he'll forgive you.

OTHER ASSORTED ERRATA:

(Photo via Frank Jarnia)

YOUR MUM HAS GOT YOU A CARD AND SIGNED IT FROM THE DOG EVEN THOUGH SHE PHONES YOU EVERY DAY

It's sort of weird your mum got you a Christmas card because she phones you every day and, like, you are here, on Christmas, so she doesn't really need to do that, but in your absence she has forgotten all the fine-toothed little rules and unrules between you and fully mummed it and got you a Christmas card. You can see, there, printed on the opposite page of the card, a little smudge of biro ink where she closed it too soon after blacking in the dog's pawprint.

A MILLENNIAL JOKE BECAUSE YOU ARE A MILLENNIAL

Ah, shit son! Nan read about millennials in The Times and slowly done the maths on her fingers and yes, yes: realised you are one! And here, look, she's found just the gift: a small cardboard box with the words "MILLENNIAL ENTITLEMENT" printed on it, that screams like a baby when you open it! Ha, ha, thanks grandma! That'll teach me for being born into the wrong economy!

A TOILET BOOK ABOUT TRUMP BECAUSE OF "THAT FACEBOOK UPDATE YOU DID"

"This is one from your dad," your mum warns, as she hands it over to you, and: ah, OK. The Little Book of Trumpisms, just what you always wanted. "Because of that Facebook update you did!" your dad is saying. "Remember! After the election?" Ah yes: on two hours sleep, you took to Facebook to really stick it to Trump, and a 60-reply thread and a load of texts from your dad later and it escalated into a full-on family barney. Your mum's walking out of the room with a "I can't talk about this again" look on, and dad's half out of his armchair, snarling. "YOU THINK YOU FUCKING KNOW SHIT, DO YOU?" he's saying. "YOU'RE 23. YOU DON'T KNOW SHITE." Lord help you if someone brings Brexit up over dinner.

THE INEVITABLE DESCENT INTO "YOUR FAVOURITE SWEET, A SHOWER GEL TWO-PACK, SOCKS"

You always used to chuckle when that was what you all got your dad each year – his favourite sweet (Liquorice All Sorts); a pair of cosy day-of-the-week socks from his favourite shop, Next; and a shower gel/deodorant set. That – when you boil your dad from the bones and dissect him – is all he really is: a man with cold feet and a regular grooming regime who has one sweet he really likes. Now look at your Christmas stash: big thing of jelly beans, cosy knitted socks, thing of Dove for Men. It's all over now, isn't it, your life? It's basically done now.

A SINGLE BOTTLE OF BEER IN A TUBE WITH SANTA ON THE FRONT OF IT AND/OR A MINIATURE-SIZED BOTTLE OF VODKA THAT COMES WITH THREE SILVER-COLOURED TRUFFLES

Now that you are an adult, everyone knows you drink, but sadly that is the full extent of this particular personality aspect of yours, so you have a gift version of the drink that most aligns with the expectation of your gender, and you will drink it, won't you, alone in your room, taking a little breather from all the winter festivity, listening through the ceiling as your family pop crackers and laugh over dinner, but you can't take it, can you, you need a little You Time; and your mum shouts weakly up the stairs, doesn't she, for you. "Hey–y?" she says. "There's pudding!" But you don't answer – you're in the dog sanctuary now, with the dog, weeping a single tear as you remember where your racing car bed used to be, all those posters you had up, how the very shape of your room has seemed to change since all your stuff was moved out of it. "It's all in the attic, a lot of it," your mum told you, over the phone, after she'd done it. "Most of it, anyway. I didn't think you still wanted all those Fall Out Boy posters." But she was wrong, and now you realise how much you miss it: this glowing house, a place to truly call your own, the embracing feeling of love, of family, of Christmas.

You rifle through your wallet, the one they bought you for your 18th birthday, grown squidgy and worn after years of being wedged full of Pret receipts in your arse pocket: your train home is in two days. Your dad talks to you in tropes and banter, now – he ribs you about football results, he tells you embarrassing things your mum has done in supermarkets, every time he spends a single penny he mocks the fact that it's coming out of his pension. He can only speak like a Furby now, 100 pre-programmed lines that you are almost entirely sick of – but he corners you in the kitchen for a brief, sincere word. "It's nice to see you," he says, single hand on the shoulder. "Are you planning on coming back up anytime soon?" Well, no: you're going to Berlin for your birthday, in May, with a few mates; Easter it sort of depends on the trains, someone's doing a "lost and strays" dinner and it's pretty close to your house, so; oh, yeah, mum's 60th is in September, you'll probably be up for that. "Ah," he says – quietly, sadly – "OK," and pootles off, and you don't really see him again until it's time for him to drive you to the station, with the big Bag for Life full of tinfoil-wrapped Christmas cake your mum has done for you that you'll be eating for dinner until mid-January. "Bye then," he says, turning to you and giving you a big stiff dad hug. "Bye, son and/or daughter. See you again in September." Yeah, nice one, dad. Bye.

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@joelgolby

More festive stuff from VICE:

Here Are All the People You're Going to See When You Go Home This Christmas

Why Beloved Christmas Cartoon 'The Snowman' Is Actually About Cocaine, One Night Stands and Death

We Asked A Satanist What He's Doing For Christmas

* I have a lot of things to say about the Sega Saturn, and my saying them now will shit on the enforced nostalgic glow I was trying to bathe this paragraph in, but needless to say: I asked for a PlayStation, my mother got it wrong, and one 32-bit console is not interchangeable for another, mum, even if it did have Virtua Fighter 2 and Daytona USA on it. There is nothing quite so deflating as a child to have your friend come over to play and look at your Sega Saturn and go, "Oh, do you not have Final Fantasy VII on it?" No. "Does it not have the triangle button?" No, it has the A, B and C buttons – the X, Y and Z are essentially useless. "Does it have a Rumble Pak?" No, Steven, it does not have a Rumble Pak! The point isn't that getting a Sega Saturn at the age of 12 was the worst thing to ever happen to me. Christmas was different when you were a kid, wasn't it?