From the new Pitbull album to your yearly pair of business socks, parents are too often the perpetrators of Christmas present cringe. Just ask writer and critic Clem Bastow, whose family has turned festive gift giving into some kind of cruel sport. If your own family Christmas is as awkward as this, you’ll definitely #needasprite.

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There are two certainties about Christmas in my family. The first is that it will inevitably be searing hot on the day but we’ll still insist on cooking a full roast lunch (or dinner, depending on how long it takes us to cook lunch) until the entire family is slicked with sweat and everybody’s hair looks like we’re in the episode of Seinfeld where the water pressure goes kaput.

The second certainty is that somebody will be given an item of clothing so unlike anything they’d ever wear that hysterical laughter is the only response.

Ill-thought-out clothing choices are the cornerstone of nearly every awkward Christmas moment my family has endured, and that’s saying a lot. We’re the sort of family that has such a marvellous embarrassment of riches when it comes to “Christmas stories” that it’s difficult to know what to pick.

The awkward Christmas dynasty began about a decade before I was born, when my cousin got up before dawn and opened everybody’s presents because he couldn’t bear the suspense of wondering what everyone had been given for another moment. (It went down about as well as a cup of cold gravy, I’m told.) From that point on there were decades’ worth of Christmas “material”, all of which I take great pride in. A Christmas without an absolute clanger of one sort or another is a Christmas I want no part of.

A Christmas without an absolute clanger of one sort or another is a Christmas I want no part of.

When I was 14 and completely obsessed with motorsport, like any extremely cool and socially functional kid, my parents found a cardboard cutout of Formula One driver Damon Hill for me. On Christmas morning I nearly called 000 because I thought someone had broken in and was hiding behind the Christmas tree. One year an aunt gave me sexy undies.

A few Christmases after that, my brother and I both got skateboards. I had dreams of becoming the next Elissa Steamer (hours of Tony Hawk will do that to you), but I toppled immediately off into a gutter and nearly broke my elbow. The gutter was outside our neighbours’ house; the neighbours whose animatronic Santa took pride of place in their frontyard every year, “singing” a variety of Christmas carols piped through the CD stacker stereo hidden in his sack.One year a Kevin Bloody Wilson CD made its way into the stacker and Santa sang expletive-ridden carols at the bemused onlookers for at least an hour before our neighbours realised.

Despite this rich tapestry of seasonal awkwardness, it’s always been clothes that are the one-way ticket to bemused expressions, sweaty palms and awkward glances. A gift of clothing is oddly intimate: it tells you a lot about what the gift giver thinks of you, and what they think you’d wear.

One year my brother — who wears black and grey and usually looks like a gallery attendant — was given the most incredible selection of printed shirts that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the back of a young AFL player cruising for his first drug/crime/sex scandal at a nightclub that has specials on frozen margaritas.

I mostly dress like a conceptual artist who really likes black metal and pro wrestling, so it stands to reason that in my lifetime I have received a lot of Very Nice pink and floral items from Sussan and its ilk.

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The Legend Of The ‘Cool Hat’

When it comes to awkward Christmas clothing moments, though, the king of Christmas gift-giving misfires was in Christmas of 2013, when we all sat down in the steamy living room to exchange gifts. The chook was in the oven and the sun was belting down on the tin roof, and everyone was looking and feeling a little like boiled hams. Eventually, Mum passed a small, soft present to my brother, which he duly unwrapped. Before we could see what the contents were, Mum excitedly announced that she had been looking for a “cool hat” for him to wear, being a skater and artist, and had found just the one.

Imagine, if you will, the sort of peaked cap a 55-year-old lady might have worn on a winery tour in 1998: squashed flat, in a plaid chambray fabric, and with a peak that looked less like every cool dude’s snap-back and more like the type you’d find on a Legionnaires cap for a toddler.

Mum awaited a response with bated breath. My brother looked as though someone had just shown him virtual reality footage of his own death. His then-girlfriend adopted an expression that was part diplomatic, part horrified contortion. I stifled what would eventually become hysterical and uncontrollable laughter.

Eventually, nobody laughed harder than Mum — it turned out that after decades of questionable clothing presents from interstate relatives, she had become the ultimate Christmas troll and given my brother something so intentionally terrible that it had transcended seasonal satire to achieve an almost godlike status in the annals of family Christmas tales.

We all took turns posing for photos wearing the Cool Hat — even our family dog had a go.

Of course, I say all of this with love, as I am one of those Pollyanna types who genuinely thinks it’s the thought that counts, and who wouldn’t really care if I got a packet of coloured kitchen sponges for Christmas (in fact, I once asked for them, as a rather eccentric child).

If someone wants to give me a nightie that looks like a salmon vol au vent, I will be just as thrilled as I would be if they gave me Oscar Isaac’s private email address written on the back of a coaster. But I know that while this Christmas will likely be as hot as a furnace as we crowd around the baked potatoes, and there’ll be some eyebrow-raising gifts given, nothing will ever top the legend of the cool hat.

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Nobody likes being stuck in awkward moments, but if you find yourself on the burning end of that awkward heat, you probably #needasprite.

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Clem Bastow is an award-winning writer and critic with a focus on popular culture, gender politics, mental health, and weird internet humour. She has sat in each of the Back To The Future trilogy Deloreans, but can’t drive. She’s on Twitter at @clembastow.