When I got the wine bottle opener I just said "Well maybe I can use it for cooking wine or something" and said thanks. We were raised not to look a gift horse in the mouth, my dad would be super disappointed if someone would indicate they were upset with a gift. His family grew up super, ultra poor and he was pulled out of highschool at 14 to go work for money to help support his family, as the oldest of 11 children. So when he got a gift, it was rare, and you never were supposed to be ungrateful.
My mom isn't like that at all. She told me this story about how her mom, also poor, once got her entire girls-portion of the family, which consisted of 5 sisters and 2 brothers, a play kitchen set for christmas. It was one giant set, like a play stove, a play fridge, etc. Since they couldn't afford toys for every kid, they split it up, so one daughter got the stove, one got the fridge. My mom got the broom. She said when she opened her present on christmas day, and saw that she had gotten a broom for christmas, she cried uncontrollably, and my grandpa, who didn't know my grandma had done that, ran out and got her some shoes or something to make her feel better. She said that getting her a broom for christmas hurt her feelings so badly, even though she knew it wasn't meant to be that way, it just was something she couldn't control. So it's pretty natural that my mom was upset that my sister gave me that beanie when she knew I had been asking for gummy bears.
