A look at the art of gifting and re-gifting in last minute shopping

TORONTO — As the stores close, the pressure to find that perfect gift heats up. The bottom line is mistakes are made, sometimes big ones.

The worst gifts some Torontonians said they have received are pretty impressive.

“This, like, furry vest that looked like it was made from a raccoon but it was fake and everyone chanted ‘try it on, try it on’ so I had to and I had to pretend I liked it,” confessed one woman on Queen Street West.

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One boy said the worst for him was getting the same book he had just finished reading, while a young girl said her worst present was downright creepy.

“A doll, and it was a dog and it would talk, but it would talk in the night,” she said.

Not surprisingly, socks were high on the list of gifts people would rather not received.

There is little doubt that most people have received a less than ideal present on some occasion.

One shopper, Steve Sanford, took receiving a re-gift in stride.

“I just got a re-gift yesterday and it was a really weird sex game,” he said, laughing, ” I don’t know. I might re-gift that one as well,”

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He said the woman who gave it to him, was up front about it being a re-gift.

As for why it was given to Sanford, he said, “I don’t know, maybe I am just an old pervert.”

All joking aside, etiquette expert Karen Cleveland said re-gifting is okay with some caveats.

“It should be appropriate, so it’s not just a hot potato that you pass around,” she said.

She added that if you are re-gifting, you should own up to it.

“Tell someone, you know, I got two of this so I think that you’d like it. But I think it’s really sneaky to pass it off as something that you meticulously shopped for,” said Cleveland.