The very next day, you gave it away … how to get rid of an unwanted Christmas gift without getting caught

‘After lying through your teeth comes the dilemma of what to do with the unwanted,’ Eleanor Limprecht writes. Photograph: RTimages/Alamy

As the recipient of an unwanted gift, is it necessary to pretend you like it? This is what most of us are trained to do as children; for some it was our first experience of being instructed to lie.

“Thank you,” I might have said to my grandmother, “for this frilly, itchy lace-trimmed dress identical to the one you gave my sister. I love it.”