The Best Gifts for Your Frenemy This Secret Santa Season
We’ve all been there. Your group of besties from home who are really only besties because you need people to drink with on breaks decided to do a gift exchange and you had the misfortune of drawing the name of the person who always compliments your hair but once tripped you in the cafeteria in middle school. While you could easily suck it up and buy her a cute coffee mug, we know how therapeutic a little passive aggressive gift-giving can be. So the purple pickled Grinches at The Eggplant are here to help! Check out this season’s hottest gift guide for some sweet but sassy ideas that’ll keep your wallet as full as your precarious love for avoiding drama.
1. A used Starbucks gift card with $3 on it
Nothing says “I forgot that I was supposed to get you something and found this in my old wallet” like a $3 gift card to Starbucks that your aunt gave you two years ago and you forgot to cash out because you couldn’t remember if there was anything left on it. Tell your frenemy that you understand they think they’re too good for a $2 drip coffee, and take pleasure in knowing they can’t pacify their bad habit of impatiently customizing their order with 17 flavor pumps and soy milk with a measly $3. Happy holidays! Their drink is on you next time.
2. Texas A&M tickets
Subtly hint that you wish they’d leave the friend group, just like Jimbo left FSU football. They know it. You know it. Both absences would be for the best. Your group has had its eye on Taggart for a hot second. You’ve been dying to invite him over for a wine and movie night, and your friend’s failure to get you into literally any other bowl game besides the friggin’ stupid Mississippi State one was just the ammunition you needed to let someone else sit in their place on the couch.
3. A mason jar that was once filled with pasta sauce
We all know that one friend who just loves “sustainability” and “crafting” and “being more environmentally righteous than literally anyone else living on the planet we’re all rapidly killing!” So, why not give them the mason jar that your store bought pasta sauce came in? Run the labels under hot water, peel them off and don’t rinse it completely around the rim. Leave that unmistakable pasta sauce stench in the jar. Give it to them proudly and watch them squirm. They can’t refuse a recycled gift or they risk everyone seeing through the free-love attitude they have so carefully cultivated!
4. A framed picture of the friend group that they look particularly awful in
Get back at them for posting that embarrassing photo of you from last year’s gift exchange on this year’s Facebook event page. You know they just LOVED your grandma’s comment about how your cheeks “haven’t been that chubby since you were a baby!” If they don’t have the framed picture displayed somewhere come next week, you can call them a shallow, unloving, prioritizer of other friends. Haha, got ‘em!
5. Your new tax return
We all know they think they’re the most politically savvy, and most willing to literally set themselves on fire to combat social injustice, of all the friends in the group. Giving them an IOU for your new tax return this holiday season should keep them angry and full of moral outrage until at least the New Year. Sure, you’ll have to give up about $7-10 of your refunded, hard-earned money in due time, but think of the testimonial material you’ll be bringing them!
6. A miniature piggy bank
Highlight your frenemy’s financial irresponsibility and your friend group’s complete lack of faith in their ability to save pocket change with a teeny tiny piggy bank you found in a thrift store! Nothing screams “every time I pass a Circle K, I can’t resist pulling out a couple of quarters and getting a Moutain Dew buzz,” more than a pink, pint-sized oinker. It may have the spirit of a deceased child attached to it, but at least it comes with its own crazy glue and a guide for piecing it back together when it is inevitably smashed to bits in an alcohol-fueled rage!
7. A bedazzled muzzle
Sick of hearing them drone on about the volunteer position they’re trying to pass off as an “experiential pre-internship?” Maybe it’s the constant yammering about how they’re just “so involved,” or how they’re “so stressed out” about the impending finals week that they seem to think is only happening to them? Try gifting them a bedazzled muzzle! Really, the resurgence of chokers paved they way for the muzzle. Let them know you care, because you know they care, about them being one step ahead of the trends at the CollegeTown boutiques.