When a Christmas detail can cause a war: the most unfortunate gifts in history

Thinking about gifts for loved ones at Christmas can be a source of anxiety: doubts about how the other person will fit the detail or what they will think of us are always part of the deliberations when choosing.

There remains the option of going practical and giving away what we know will be useful to anyone, like socks or pajamas, even with fear of being the dullest in the world.

A self-help book or a mug with the inscription

They are also options that, depending on the context, can do their job when what is sought is only to cover the file.

In fact, sometimes it is better to be unimaginative with gifts than to be overly witty by giving a relative, a friend or a couple something gigantic that they have nowhere to put or create headaches and stress;

like what Kim Kardashian probably felt when every other day she woke up to discover that her former partner Kanye West had made her the owner of 10 Burger King restaurants or commissioned a hologram of her dead father.

Christmas is a time of peace.

One of the most remembered and celebrated events in contemporary history was the famous truce along the Western Front that the different sides agreed to at the end of 1914 in World War I.

That, according to chronicles of the time, left images as surprising as those of German and British soldiers singing Christmas carols together, toasting or playing soccer games.

Gifts, however, have a potentially problematic from the moment in which there is social pressure, expectations that are very easy to frustrate and a wide field of meaning, because, implicitly or explicitly, they also carry a message.

Especially if they are for an intimate enemy.

In the following selection there is a bit of all that,

The gift comes with taunt

At Christmas 2011, Kate Middleton, now Princess of Wales, decided to tease her then-single brother-in-law Harry the way only a sister-in-law can: by handing him a

Baptized "Make your own girlfriend grow", with a pink rubber female figure inside, inflatable with water.

There is no record of what was the specific reaction of Queen Elizabeth II, who is assumed to have been present at the delivery given the protocol that the British monarchy also follows for Christmas gifts, which are always delivered one day earlier than normal. on Christmas Eve, and they are usually humorous and cheap.

Harry, years later, began dating Meghan Markle and the joke is over: together with her, he renounced her role in the Royal Family and, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, exposed some of the institution's racist shame.

William, Kate Middleton and Harry in the happy times.

When the current Princess of Wales gave her brother-in-law funny gifts that later didn't seem so funny.Cordon Press

The Spanish Royal House keeps track of the gifts it receives only since 2015, although, looking for strange native examples, it seems that in 1970 the oil magnate Lloyd Powers gave Juan Carlos I an image of his son, the current monarch Felipe VI, framed in the fangs of a hippopotamus that the king emeritus had killed in Angola.

Until now, the portrait has not been seen in the background of any Christmas speech.

All you want for Christmas is me

It is quite common to give a gift to the Pope when you have a meeting with him.

It is also normal that these have to do with their own culture, in order to share it with the Pontiff.

For example, Vice President Yolanda Díaz presented him with a book by Rosalía de Castro, a great exponent of Galician letters, while Evo Morales surprised something else by giving Francisco a hammer and sickle-shaped crucifix, appealing to the union between Jesuits and Marxists in Latin America.

US President Lyndon B. Johnson went further in his search for a detail with personal significance and, directly, at Christmas 1967, he gave Pope Paul VI a bust of his own head (Johnson's).

One of those examples of imbalances that sometimes occur in these exchanges:

Nicolás Maduro with Pope Francis.

A gift is a gift.EFE

It is not known where in the Vatican the bust of Lyndon B. Johnson was deposited, although, according to a State Department chief of protocol, the president ordered a consignment of 200. Several were delivered to Asian leaders, while the rest may still be be purchased at a price of 150 dollars on the page of the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation, for those who want to guess what the Pope experienced while holding him.

The doll of vicarious violence

Director Alfred Hitchcock subjected the actresses in his films to mistreatment and psychological torture with the supposed aim of preparing their roles.

Among those who spoke out, it seems that the one who got the worst part was Tippi Hedren, star of

(1963), who in her memoirs claimed to have been sexually harassed by the filmmaker, as well as being injured during the filming of some sequences of the famous horror film due to the use of real birds, of which she was not informed.

A cruelty that extended to the actress's family: to her daughter, also an interpreter Melanie Griffith, when she was only six years old, she gave him a figurine of a dead Hedren, in a miniature sarcophagus.

When the Me Too movement broke out, the classic film star spoke again about her experience with Hitchcock: “There is nothing new in this.

It's very disconcerting to constantly have men who think they can do whatever they want to women."

The film director Alfred Hitchcock directs the actress Tippi Hedren in the filming of 'Marnie', in 1964. Giving his protagonist's daughter a doll of her dead mother seemed like a funny detail.

Hulton Archive (Getty Images)

it's for your good

The gifts of the former leader of Podemos Pablo Iglesias during his time in politics always gave much to talk about, from the

DVDs to King Felipe VI to the basketball book that, during the negotiations to form a government in 2016, he gave to Pedro Sánchez with the dedication: "It is good to start with what unites us".

Of those present with a message, Iglesias would also receive another from the presenter Pablo Motos, during a visit to the

In the framework of the criticism of the machismo of Motos after a campaign by the Ministry of Equality in which he was alluded to was attacked on Antena 3, Iglesias recently revealed that the Valencian comedian gave him a TRX string system.

"You have to go a long way to give a political leader an exercise machine to reduce his hump," he declared in an article where he described Motos as "a symbol and a reference for men who look or feel small ”.

However, in the same piece he admitted to frequently using the gift and recognized it as very useful and favorable.

The most wanted in The Spy Shop

Weeks before the end of World War II, in what was undoubtedly to be interpreted as a goodwill gesture at the start of a new and improved relationship between allies, the Vladimir Lenin Pioneer Organization (i.e., the Soviet Youth) gave away to the American W. Averell Harriman, ambassador in Moscow, a wooden plaque with an engraving of the symbol of the bald eagle, the National Bird of the North American country.

A very positive sign of diplomatic recognition, if it had not been for the transmission device hidden inside so that the Soviet Union was aware of all the conversations of the five ambassadors who held the position until their discovery in 1951. Christened The Thing, was still a good gift, because, all told, the device was of great value:

Who are you calling a coward?

There are no historical records that indicate that it is not a literary, artistic and, above all, satirical license, but the Flemish poem of 1346

(in Spanish,

), by an unknown author, attributed the origin of the 100 Years War to a clash between the counselor Robert III of Artois and King Edward III of England.

The former, whose property had been confiscated by France after attempting to forge his father's will to inherit the County of Artois, tried to instigate war by provoking the English monarch, presenting him with a heron at a banquet, "the most cowardly bird”, according to the poem.

And it worked.

Although various historians have assumed that the story is fictional, authors such as the 100 Year War expert Donald J. Kagay have considered it a good reflection of the relationship between the two men.

greeks gift

Gifts to another person that are really for oneself: a true classic.

From that book we've been wanting to read for so long to that concert we didn't have a date for, gift-giving season is fertile ground for indirect gifts.

It is a tradition that goes back a long way and that the poet Homer already reflected in

where the most famous self-interested gift in history, the Trojan Horse, appeared for the first time.

The events, the veracity of which has been widely disputed over the centuries, are well known: the Greeks presented a gigantic wooden horse to the Trojans, who understood it as recognition and a sign of their victory.

However, when he introduced it into the city, a group of soldiers came out of the horse and finally took Troy.

In some countries, the expression "Greek gift" is used to refer to those present with a hidden motive.

That dress suits you to death

Greek mythology, in general, is full of "gifts from the Greeks."

Zeus himself decided that a good wedding gift for the sister-in-law of his enemy Prometheus, Pandora, was a box with all the evils of the world inside.

The thing was also about weddings when the witch Medea, angry after Jason abandoned her to go with Creusa, Creon's daughter, anticipated the union between her ex-husband and the lover by sending her a poisoned dress, which automatically caused her death. when he put it on.

This idea also appears in the myth of Hercules, who died after putting on Nessus's shirt, a gift from his third wife which carried, unknown to her, the blood of the centaur Nessus and caused the hero to burn after putting it on.

A simple reminder that

If Zeus gives a gift, better not open it.

Ask Pandora why.Cordon press (Ann Ronan Picture Library/Herita)

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