All I want for Christmas is... not this. Gifts not to buy for cyclists to avoid a festive faux pas

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All across the land, sometime on December 25th, people will be regretting having a hobby, or once upon a time a long while ago saying they liked something in a casual offhand remark, just once. A staggering 67% of all Christmas presents are bought on these two reasons alone, and the rest are candles. Unfortunately, cyclists are far from being immune to this phenomenon. 

Whether your pastime/pass-time is golf, bird watching, fishing or frogs, you will receive something with that hobby on it. It doesn’t matter if it’s actually useful to you, it will have your Thing on it because that obviously defines the gamut of your needs and desires as a human being. And you’ll remember when you said you thought snow leopards were cool when you saw them on the David Attenboroughs that time, and haven’t said anything about it since but have graciously received a snow leopard-related gift every single year thereafter, and will until the end of your days. That fleece jumper with the snow leopard on was a belter, wasn’t it?

No one seems to have noticed that these gifts never make an appearance in your day-to-day life once all the Christmas things are cleared away and put in the loft for another year. As “A Cyclist” you can never escape this situation, and are forever cursed with the belief that you’ll like anything, absolutely anything, related to bicycles.

Despite road.cc being kind enough to offer a healthy selection of Christmas gift guides to suit any budget and cycling discipline for you to pick knowledgeably from, you might still be tempted to go off-piste and buy any of the following as a lovely gift for your cycling companion... but please please don’t. And if you want to know what we really really want, check out our guide to gifts for the discerning cyclist instead.

Park Tool Pizza Cutter

It’s a Christmas classic now, and has probably made Park Tool as much money as Noddy Holder this time of year, although both definitely have better works in their oeuvre.

There are no statistics on what percentage of the pizza cutter’s annual sales are in the last month of the year, but we’re guessing it’s all of them. Every cyclist has at least one of these, many have a third drawer down in the kitchen devoted to them, and they don’t need yet another one.

The Park Disc Brake Pad Spreader (above) actually looks to be a more efficient pizza cutter and has at least one other use too, so buy us one of those if you must.

Please don’t buy yet another Park Tool Pizza Cutter here

A cheap shiny mini-pump

We can entirely see the reasoning behind this. It looks nice and shiny and you know cyclists are like magpies with shiny things, and it’s teeny and light and you know cyclists like things that are teeny and light.

Unfortunately a lot of them don’t work, unless you count work as extreme physical effort with little to show for it apart from an asthmatic wheezing noise (oh, that’s also most of us struggling up a hill). Anyway, don’t be surprised if after a couple of months it “fell out of a pocket somewhere”.

Refrain from purchasing one of these here

A handlebar-mounted BBQ

It’s easy to see why this might seem a great gift. Your cycling friend is always going out with that little handbag thing on their bars full of snacks and whatnot, so it’s an easy reach to think that they’d love to stop on top of a hill on one of their gravelling rides and rustle up a tasty cooked treat.

Absolutely not

They’re forever going on about that sort of thing aren’t they... but there are many, many reasons to say no. Just no.

Don’t even think about clicking on this. Thanks.

Me, as a cycling Christmas bauble

Fair play to technology, the ability to turn a photograph of a cyclist gurning at a camera during a sportive into a festive Christmas tree decoration in a couple of easy clicks is amazing. But as with a lot of technology, just because you can it doesn't mean you should. Now I understand why cats throw themselves at trees…

Don’t buy me for the Christmas tree here

A comedy cycling jersey

Ah, a mainstay of our annual Don't Buy Me This festive guide.

The Lycra cycling top is a wonderful moving canvas on which to display some amazing examples of art and design, and there are many examples that have become classics, while many many more have become victims to fashion and have slowly sedimented to the bottom of the drawer, been relegated to turbo-trainer use or moved on to the charity shop.

Despite all stylish and flattering designs available and the fickleness of fashion, it’s good to see the wacky cycling jersey simply refuses to disappear and the tuxedo one is still available. Such crazy japes!

While we were hurting our eyes seeing what was available we gulped at this one, would you turn up on a group ride with 'Urges' splashed across your chest? We’re not even going to provide an ironic 'don't buy me' link for this.

Something both cycling AND Christmassy

Please don't scare the children by buying these here

A 'tool for cyclists'

While to the cyclist giver’s eyes it looks small, compact, full of useful features, easy to store in a back pocket or tool pouch and the perfect gift, I'm afraid to say it’s really just a cheap sheet of stamped metal where very few of the tools will work on a modern bike. Those that might are specifically designed to round off, bend or scratch anything they touch on a bicycle, and then take a gouge out of one of your knuckles on the way out.

While you’re not looking at the Park Pizza Cutter, buy any of the other Park tools as a gift instead. Any of them, or any tool from another reputable cycling tool brand, will be better than this. Although ironically, this does also look like it might make a functional pizza cutter.

Don't be tempted by a multi-tool that can’t do anything well apart from draw blood here

Something with a bike on

As we've already mentioned, just because the person you like enough to give something to at Christmas likes bicycles, it doesn’t mean that everything they own needs to have a bicycle on.

It might seem to you the way they witter on about bikes All The Time that that’s all there is to life, but that's not true*. There’s an entire world of non-cycling-related gifts they might appreciate, so maybe pass on that tie/mug/t-shirt/candle with a bicycle slapped on and choose something completely different instead.

(*There’s also cake. Buy them some cake, they’ll love it.)

Please don’t buy something a cyclist would never wear here

A 'Useful Cycling Thing'

The market is awash with things that have been designed for putting on a bicycle by people who have never ever ridden a bike, but think people that do would benefit from. It’s usually some sort of ‘safety’ feature.

> Where cycling products go to die

Indicator gloves are a classic of the genre, as are indicator helmets and indicators on seat posts, or indicators that fit on forks, and rucksacks with indicators, and handlebar mounted indicators... you get the idea. Someone trying to be useful comes up with a new indicator design and placement idea every six months, seemingly never having done the basic research that a similar bicycle indicator system launched six months ago has disappeared without a trace. You can put “safe bicycle infrastructure” on your Christmas wish list as many times as you like, but your auntie will still get you indicators instead.

Don't think you’re giving a helpful gift here

Anything made from an old bike part

These are the days of reuse, recycle and repurpose, and it’s a very worthy approach to adopt across all aspects of our lives. There’s definitely no argument here. Apart from bike bits, that is. There’s a reason why they’ve been thrown away, and it’s because they’re worthless bits of rusty bent metal.

This doesn’t stop any number of gifts being made available by thrifty, crafty types who have been let loose in your spares bin. The reuse, recycle and repurpose practice is a smug delusion, as making something out of an old bike bit merely briefly delays its inevitable journey into landfill via a lengthy period in the corner getting more rusty.

Rocking around the absurdly heavy pile of old bicycle cassette sprockets turned into a Christmas tree

Don't spend £5 on a bit of spare chain made into a keyring here

...and this

This thoughtful art piece made out of old bike chains is another unwelcome road.cc tradition now. 

A build-your-own bike model kit

This is prime Secret Santa material, so expect this if you’re The Cyclist in the office. If you're a cyclist who regularly uses the internet, it's probably been appearing on your algorithm since August.

It’s a fun bike thing, it’s about a tenner, you get to put it together and you love tinkering with bikes, don’t you? Things move, look! And it even comes with a track pump.

Surely you’re going to cherish it. Spend seven minutes putting it together whilst on hold to HR where it can then sit in your desk for a couple of years, becoming a place to hang rubber bands before you eventually throw it in a bin when you move floors. Then, many decades after your death, the mini track pump will have made its way along the refuse chain to float in the Indian Ocean where it chokes a baby turtle. Some gifts do just keep giving.

Think about the baby turtles before purchasing here

Cycling socks

There are socks for cycling in, and socks with cycling on. It’s important to know the difference when choosing this most traditional of Christmas gifts.

When perusing the choices, there are pages upon pages upon pages of the former to suit all ride occasions and disciplines. So why you would bypass all of these, which can just as easily be worn off the bike, for something that just lets anyone who glances at your ankle know that you ride a bike in your spare time is something we’d have to have a quiet chat about while I do the washing up and you do the drying. Especially don’t buy this pair as it just spells crash, but oh how you’ll laugh at the irony.

Buy absolutely any other pair of socks other than these here

A cycling scented candle

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a candle is the gift you give to someone when you have no idea what to buy them. A staggering 97% (possibly 98%, or 98.5%) of these candles are never lit and just sit there looking, um, like candles.

You could almost justify a cycling candle purchase by pointing out that Wout Van Aert has invested in Belgian handmade candle company Mon Dada, so at least there's a connection there and probably a chain wax joke to be made, but we’re too bewildered to think of one right now.

While we’re a little puzzled, what would the perfect cycling candle scent be? The fresh crisp scent of meadow grass, the earthy tones of autumn leaves or the heady musk of 100 mile old cycling shorts? Hmmm, musky.

Be stuck for something to buy here

A bicycle-shaped candle holder

Then you can put your candle in this bicycle shaped candle holder, whilst crying a little inside as you dust around it for the rest of your life.

You, but as a cushion

Another 'classic'... you, in cycling kit, but as a small cuddly cushion. This is ready to become sentient in the middle of the night and leave the house to wreak bloody vengeance upon anybody who has stolen your Strava KOMs, maybe using the Cyclist's Tool as a weapon. Sleep tight everyone, and we hope you wake on Christmas morn to none of this...

Please don’t baffle the local police by buying a Snugzy Mini Me here