@georgia Thinking of good gifts yearly is pretty hard because you eventually get someone all the things you know they wanted, so it's understandable that people would go "this person likes this category of thing" but crappy gift you don't like is an unique kind of shitty. TBH the best thing to do is probably go through the uncomfortable explanation to the gift-giver to dispel the bad feel.
One of the greatest advantages of being man is that we can just gift eachother obscure tools and everyone will be happy, completely skipping every gift problem. Christmas, birthday, wedding, tool is always good.