Christmas Comedy Gift Guide: Stocking filler ideas

Booze-related gifts

How do you get someone a boozy gift for Christmas without outing them as a giant soak? Why, get them a gift that looks like one thing but is in fact a secret drinking receptacle. It’s thoughtful and thoughtless all at the same time!

There are now a thousand novel ways to hide your booze, from inside the humble Bible to the practical bra. Though why you might get your friends or family a Bible or a bra is beyond us. Make up a reason, it’s your gift, we don’t know your life. Just make sure you wink when you give them the ‘bra’ and they’ll know it’s about boozing.

If no one you know is into bras or Bibles there’s always the handy hipflask masquerading as tampons. This will only come a cropper if that time of the month arrives and you’re caught short with only Apple Sourz in your sanitary item section. Or if you want to live as a functioning member of society at any point in your life.

For those hard-to-reach members of your inner gift circle you might consider the many wonders of home made taxidermy to be found on eBay. Be it that uncle no one actually invites to things, or that niece you want to test to see just how alternative she really is, taxidermied animals are the perfect gift for someone you want to get any sort of reaction out of. And if of course there is no reaction, that’s the most telling of all. It will only confirm your fears that Uncle Billy has killed before. [John Stansfield]

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Gifts for friends and family

With the Starbucks cup controversy fast becoming the fatal blow that prevents this whole 'Christmas' thing from catching on, it's time to move fast and re-establish the true spirit of the religious season by buying some poorly-thought-out crap for all your friends and family. And nothing says 'I really don't know who the fuck you are as an individual' like a goddamn Yankee Candle.

Yes, the Yankee Candle has officially replaced the 'slightly comical coffee mug' as the go-to gift for work-based Secret Santas and family members whose funerals you'd probably have to fake a sadface at.

The Yankee Candle Company was started in Massachusetts in 1969 when Michael Kittredge used a bunch of melted crayons to make a scented candle as a gift for his mother. Apparently back in 1969, all you needed to start a business was the sort of sympathetic smile your mother reserves for grandpa when he forgets to wear pants. This early lesson in exactly how unfussy people get at Christmas was enough to launch Kittredge into mass production of the kind of unimaginative bullshit you'd give to people you're not trying to sleep with.

If you honestly find yourself at a point during Christmas shopping where 'something that leaves a strange smell in the air' seems an acceptable gift-direction to take, why not just go all out and buy one gallon of coyote urine? [FRED FLETCH]

Cheap Christmas gifts

There are many gifts for under £1 that still demonstrate your magnanimity. Celery, for example, contains compounds similar to the libido-boosting androstenedione. In fact, it's thought that chomping on a few sticks helps a man sweat pheromones that draw suitors towards him like rats to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Unfortunately, pheromones are not readily proven or applicable to the human sex, but studies have shown that when androstenedione is inhaled by female pigs on heat they assume the mating position. Therefore, for just 69p at Lidl, you can find the gift that's perfect for the pig fucker in your life. [Ben Venables]