Novelty items, the slogan tees and the fancy dress, are the presents British people least want to receive. Oxfam asked YouGov to put it to 2,311 UK adults in November 2024, and 49% of those who celebrate Christmas named novelty as their least favourite gift to open. Two years earlier it sat ninth, and soap held the top spot.

Which is awkward, because novelty is roughly what "unusual" has come to mean on a shop shelf. So this list runs on a different definition of unusual Christmas gifts: uncommon enough that they do not already own one, useful enough that it is still in use in March.

Most guides on this search use unusual, quirky and rare as though they were the same word, occasionally on the same page. Twenty unusual Christmas gift ideas, real prices from £9 to £675, and most of them are things we do not sell.

The method for choosing, rather than a list of things to buy, is in our guide to gifts for someone who has everything.

The joke, if there must be one, goes in the card.

1. Something Made by One of the Last Two Companies in England That Still Makes It

There are two scissor-making companies left in England. One is William Whitley of Sheffield, and last Christmas a pair of their four-inch stork needlework scissors, hand-finished in that workshop, cost £29 including UK delivery. Prices move, so check.

The rule underneath matters more than the scissors. "Designed in Britain" is not "made in Britain". A named workshop, a named town and a stated method separate an uncommon gift from drop-shipped stock in new packaging.

Someone who sews uses a pair like this constantly and would never spend £29 replacing theirs.

Best for anyone who sews, mends or crafts. Skip if they don't, because a beautiful tool for a hobby they do not have is a novelty with better manners.

2. The Umbrella That Ends the Cycle of Broken Umbrellas

The umbrella most people own cost about twelve pounds and inverted on its second outing. Almost nobody replaces it with a better one. They buy another twelve-pound one.

Ours is built for the other outcome. The walking umbrella is £145: solid beechwood shaft, hand-scorched maple crook handle, manually cut canopy, hand-assembled frame, lovingly made in London. The folding one is £110, auto-open, made and assembled in England. Free UK mainland shipping over £100.

December is when it proves itself, on the Boxing Day walk and the January platform. Choosing Mallard and Orange because it is exactly their colour is a quieter personalisation than a name.

The verdict: the good version of an ordinary thing beats an unusual version of nothing.

3. The Thing They Already Own, Repaired Properly

The best present on this list may already be in their house. The boots they stopped wearing when the soles went. The print that has leaned against the wall since they moved in.

• Resoling good boots, roughly £50 to £120

• Framing a print or a photograph, £40 to £120

• Servicing a mechanical watch, from around £295, so that one is a joint present

Get a quote first. These are bands, not prices.

One practical catch: you have to take the thing away, so the present on the day is a card explaining where the boots have gone.

Direct recommendation: if they own one thing they love and no longer use, this beats everything else here.

4. The Tool for the Hobby They Mentioned Once

Every serious hobby contains a piece of kit everybody needs and nobody buys, because it is not the fun part. A UK airsoft guide recommends a £55 chronograph on exactly those grounds.

The same gap exists everywhere:

• A proper sharpening stone for the cook

• A decent head torch for the runner

• A cable tester for the guitarist

Ask someone from their club what everyone puts off buying.

Best for a hobby older than a year. Skip if it is three weeks old: kit for an abandoned hobby is the saddest object in the house.

5. Cashmere, at £145 or at £675

They almost certainly own a blanket and a scarf. They almost certainly do not own a good one, and that difference shows on first use.

The ladder, all woven in the British Isles from Italian-spun yarn and dry clean only:

• Love Stories scarf, £145

• Eternal Edition scarf, £175, a heavier weight

• Love Stories throw, £390

• Eternal Edition throw, £675, roughly double the cashmere weight

£390 is more than anyone expects a friend to spend, and we will not pretend otherwise. This is the gift from a partner, parents, or several people together.

Quick comparison: the £145 scarf, the safest of these unusual gifts for her, gets carried everywhere. The throw stays in one room and gets used every evening.

6. The Pair of Socks That Ends the Multipack

Novelty socks sit on the list of Britain's most commonly unwanted Christmas gifts, alongside deodorant sets and soap sets, according to a 2024 survey cited by Finder UK.

The failure is the joke printed on them, not the sock. A merino or alpaca pair in a plain colour gets worn weekly for years.

Check fibre content, the sole and the mill. Good pairs run £20 to £35. We make alpaca walking socks, and so do several excellent British mills.

Best for anyone, at any budget, which is rare on this list. Skip if there is a cartoon on them.

7. One Excellent Thing That Gets Eaten or Drunk

The best gift for someone with a full house is one that disappears.

Biscuiteers make a Nativity tin of eleven gingerbread biscuits, iced individually by hand at their London bakery, £39.95 as seen last Christmas. The biscuits go in a fortnight. The keepsake tin stays for years.

The other version is one bottle they would never buy themselves, £40 to £90, rather than three miniatures in a gift set. Prepackaged sets communicate one thing: that the shop was on your way.

Quick comparison: one £40 thing from a maker with a name, against a £40 hamper of six anonymous ones. Only the first is remembered.

8. A Table Built One Piece at a Time

A gift that arrives in instalments, one Christmas at a time. Sheffield Cutlery Shop sell King's pattern pieces singly, stamped "Stainless Sheffield England", delivery included. Last season:

• Dessert fork £9, dessert spoon £9, dessert knife £11

• A forged, hand-finished cheese and butter knife set, £30

• Denby of Derbyshire, 200 years of English pottery, stars turkey platter, usually £65

The second Christmas is when it stops being cutlery and becomes a gift nobody else could give.

Direct recommendation: begin with the pieces used at every meal, not the platter used once a year, unless they cook Christmas dinner.

9. Something Very Good, Bought Second Hand

One buy-it-for-life reviewer reckons more than half the durable items on his channel were bought used, at 30 to 50% below retail. That is how £90 buys a £180 object.

Second hand is no longer apologetic. KPMG UK surveyed 3,000 consumers in December 2023: one in three said they would buy more pre-owned items the following year, nearly double the rate a year earlier.

Cast iron, hand tools, leather, glassware and furniture survive a previous owner. Anything with a battery or a hygiene dimension does not.

The verdict: second hand is not a smaller gift. For the same money, usually a better object.

10. The Ornament With This Year On It

Most personalised gifts are opened once. This one is opened every December for the rest of their life.

A name can date badly. A year cannot be wrong, because it is simply the year it happened, and the box of decorations slowly becomes a record of who gave what and when. A first Christmas in a new house, or as a family, or after moving abroad.

Glass, wood, brass or hand-stitched felt, from a named maker. Printed plastic is the novelty version.

The sequence is the gift, not the object.

Direct recommendation: if you buy one, buy one every year.

11. The £60 Version of an £8 Tool

The objects with the widest gap between the cheap one and the good one are the ones nobody upgrades, because the cheap one technically works. Bands, from a named maker with a warranty:

• Secateurs, £40 to £70

• A proper torch, £40 to £90

• Kitchen scissors, £25 to £45

Item 4 is specialist kit they would never buy. This is household kit they already bought, badly.

If they use it weekly and have owned the same one for eight years, that is the gift.

Best for the gardener, the cook and the person who fixes things, one of the more reliable unusual gifts for him. Skip if they are mid-declutter.

12. The Household Things Nobody Replaces Until They Burn

Their oven gloves are scorched, thin at the thumb, and from 2014. That is the gift.

Rebecca Pitcher makes illustrated garden-birds oven gloves in teal cotton, heat protective to 250C, made in the UK, £24 last season. Linen tea towels from a named mill, an end-grain chopping board and a coir doormat with actual depth all work the same way.

One condition: a printed slogan turns any of these into a novelty item.

The verdict: the most-used object in a house is rarely the most-considered one, and that gap is where the good cheap gifts live.

13. A Book They Cannot Buy New

The difference between a forgettable book and an unforgettable one is usually the copy, not the title.

What to hunt, through secondhand dealers and the usual online listings, where item 9 applies too:

• An out-of-print edition or a signed copy

• The edition that sat on their parents' shelf

• A parish history or an old Ordnance Survey sheet of where they grew up

Then write in the front. It is the only part of the gift that cannot be replaced.

Best for someone whose history you know. Skip if you are guessing, because a wrong old book is just an old book.

14. A Year of Something, Not a Day Out

A ticket is one afternoon. A membership is every wet Sunday until next December.

The National Trust, English Heritage, the RHS, Kew, a county wildlife trust, a local gallery, an independent cinema. Most individual memberships sit comfortably under £150 a year, though joint and family rates change annually, so check.

Unlike an experience voucher, a membership does not expire on a date and does not need booking before it becomes useful. It sits in a wallet, being valid.

Quick comparison: one £45 day out, or a year of them for not a great deal more.

15. An Experience With a Date Already In It

The voucher in the kitchen drawer, unredeemed, eleven months old. Experience gifts fail in one way, always that one.

The fix is three moves:

• Book the date before you wrap it

• Write the date in the card

• If it needs two people, clear your own diary too

A booked, named, dated thing is a gift. A credit balance is a gift card in a better coat. The top results for this search are experience shops, which is why none of them mentions the drawer.

Best for a recipient with no space left in the house. Skip if their diary is impossible, because an unbooked experience becomes an obligation.

16. A Subscription That Is Not Wine or Socks

The best thing about a subscription is not the first box. It is the fourth, arriving in March, when every other present has been absorbed into the house.

An independent quarterly on a subject they care about. A named UK roaster's rotating single origin. A seed club, a specialist magazine, a cinema pass. The different Christmas gifts that keep introducing themselves.

Avoid anything that ships a randomly selected object every month, which is a novelty subscription in a kraft box. Check whether it auto-renews.

The verdict: buy the twelve months rather than the trial, and choose on subject, not format.

17. Secret Santa, Under £15, Actually Good

£15 is where novelty wins, because at that price a joke feels like the safe option. It is the least safe option in the room.

Under the cap: a single piece of Sheffield-stamped cutlery at £9 to £11, delivery included. A very good chocolate bar or a jar of something from a named producer. A proper pencil, a packet of unusual seeds.

They open it in front of everybody, which is why a small useful object beats a laugh lasting nine seconds.

Quick comparison: the joke mug against the £11 Sheffield dessert knife. Only one is still in the house in June.

18. The Gift You Have to Order in November

The more unusual the gift, the earlier it stops being available. A small workshop does not have a warehouse.

Royal Mail had not published its Christmas 2026 last-posting dates when we wrote this, and usually confirms them in October. Its 2025 dates, as last year's pattern only:

• 2nd Class, Wednesday 17 December

• 1st Class, Saturday 20 December

• Special Delivery Guaranteed, Tuesday 23 December

The real deadline belongs to the maker, not the post office. Independent framers, cobblers and restorers want commissions in November.

What we handle is different: overnight delivery, gift wrap, a handwritten card and no price slips at checkout.

Direct recommendation: order anything hand made by the end of November.

19. The Present That Arrives in January on Purpose

Every present they get this year will be opened inside the same twenty minutes. Yours does not have to be.

Under the tree goes a card saying what is coming and when: a meal booked for the third week of January, a subscription timed to land after the decorations come down.

January is the month with nothing in it. The same gift does more work then than on the 25th, and is remembered as its own event rather than one parcel among fifteen.

Best for the person who already has too much to open. Skip if they are a child, who cannot be asked to wait three weeks and should not be.

20. The Novelty Gift, Now Britain's Least Wanted Present

Oxfam GB and YouGov, 2,311 UK adults, published 3 January 2025: novelty items are the gift Britain is least happy to receive, at 49%. The top five:

• Novelty items

• Kitchen utensils

• Underwear

• Home furnishings

• Toiletries

Finder UK's Censuswide survey of 2,000 adults in November 2024 found 58% of us, around 31 million people, have received a Christmas gift we did not like, worth £1.27 billion, at £41 a head.

A novelty gift is a joke you make on someone's behalf, in their house, for ten years. Put it in the card instead.

The verdict: the best unusual Christmas presents are uncommon enough that they do not own one, useful enough that they still have it in March.

FAQ

What are some unique Christmas gifts?

Uncommon and genuinely useful, not weird. Three at three budgets: a piece of Sheffield-stamped cutlery at around £10, a repair of something they already own at £40 to £150, and a British-made umbrella at £110 to £145. Each gets used repeatedly, which separates unique Christmas gifts from novelties.

What are some quirky but useful gifts?

The quirk should be in where it came from, not in what it looks like. Hand-finished scissors from one of the last two scissor makers in England, £29. A dated tree ornament. Very good socks with no cartoon on them. Quirky Christmas gifts fail when the joke is the product.

What's the hottest Christmas gift this year?

We cannot tell you, and anyone who does is guessing. The more useful answer: the hottest gift is the most duplicated, the most discounted in January and the most likely to be abandoned by March. Novelty items are already Britain's least wanted present, at 49%, per Oxfam and YouGov.

What is the most unwanted Christmas gift in the UK?

Novelty items, named by 49% of UK adults who celebrate Christmas in polling by YouGov for Oxfam GB, published January 2025. Kitchen utensils, underwear, home furnishings and toiletries follow. Novelty climbed from ninth place two years earlier, displacing soap.

When is the last day to order Christmas gifts in the UK?

Royal Mail had not confirmed its Christmas 2026 dates at the time of writing, and normally publishes them in October. In 2025 the UK inland dates were 17 December for 2nd Class, 20 December for 1st Class and 23 December for Special Delivery Guaranteed. For anything hand finished, the maker's own cut-off is usually late November.

Can you return an unwanted Christmas gift in the UK?

Not always, and the windows are shorter than most shoppers assume. Shoppers have reported Zara applying its standard 30-day policy over Christmas, and another large retailer refusing a return two days past its cut-off. Check the retailer's Christmas extension rather than assuming one exists.

Are unusual gifts a good idea for someone who has everything?

Yes, with one qualification: unusual has to mean uncommon rather than novel. Someone who has everything owns the cheap version of most things and the good version of almost none. That gap is the gift. Our guide to Christmas gifts for someone who has everything has the method.

If you would rather we handled the parcel, we will handwrite the card and leave the price where it belongs, nowhere inside the box.