Funny Christmas Gifts for Dad That Turn Into a Family Joke
Every family has one gift that still gets brought up every Christmas, years later. Here is how to give Dad that one, based on 1,100+ reviews from the people who gave one of our portraits.
The short answer: put Dad in the picture
- A portrait of him as a cowboy riding a T-rex, made from one ordinary photo.
- See the preview free in about a minute, before you pay.
- For Christmas, order by December 1 in the US, Ireland, Canada and Australia.
Sample portrait made for demonstration.
Ask Dad what he wants for Christmas and you already know the answer. "Nothing." "Don't spend your money on me." "Socks are fine." So every year he gets socks, a mug that says something about coffee, and a gift card he forgets in his wallet until March.
Then there are the families who gave up on useful and went for funny. On gift forums you find them everywhere: the kid who has given Dad a Nicolas Cage present every single year for seven years, the kid who hunts down the most impractical corn holders on the internet, the family whose grandma gets her face on a new object every Christmas. Nobody remembers the socks. Everybody remembers the year of the Nic Cage blanket.
I run Hystoriq Portraits. You upload one photo of your dad and we put him in an old photograph: a cowboy riding a T-rex, a 1930s gangster in a pinstripe suit, an explorer standing next to Bigfoot. More than 1,100 people have left a review after giving one of our portraits, and a lot of them bought it for exactly this reason. One customer put it better than I could:
Can’t wait to give it on Christmas to my alien lover father!
What gift-givers taught me about funny gifts
The best part is the moment he opens it
A funny gift lives or dies in the ten seconds after the paper comes off. A joke he has to read and think about is a smile. A joke he can see, with his own face in it, is the whole room reacting at once. One parent described the scene when their grown son opened his portrait on Christmas morning:
When he opened it, there were gasps and lots of laughter. Everybody loved it. He thought it was one of the greatest gifts of all time.
It only works if it looks like him
A cowboy on a dinosaur is mildly funny. Your dad on a dinosaur, with his exact squint and his exact eyebrows, is a different thing entirely. The face is the joke. Often there is even a double take first, because he does not expect to find himself in the picture:
He didn’t realize he was in the picture. It took him a few seconds to see himself and then he loved it even more…he couldn’t stop laughing at how good this turned out.
A good joke gift stays on the wall
Most gag gifts are funny once and then live in the garage. A portrait gets framed, hung where people see it, and explained to every guest who stops in front of it. That is how a gift becomes a family joke instead of a one-day laugh:
The picture turned out great. This will bring smiles and laughter to our family for a long time.
The ideas, by the kind of dad
The dad whose stories get bigger every year
Rider on a T-Rex
Cowboy hat, neckerchief and reins in hand, riding a T-rex across the plains in a sepia photograph that looks a hundred years old. "Custom dinosaur portrait" is the search that brings the most people to our Etsy shop, and this is the portrait they are looking for. For the dad who tells the same story every Thanksgiving and adds a new detail every time.
Try it with his photo
The dad who runs the family like a boss
1930s Gangster
Fedora, pinstripe three-piece suit and a vintage car parked behind him on a city street in the 1930s. For the dad who controls the thermostat, the TV remote and the grill, and who has made you an offer you couldn't refuse at least once. Sample shown.
Try it with his photo
The dad who swears he saw something in the woods
Bigfoot Explorer
An 1890s expedition photograph of him standing proudly next to Bigfoot, as if he had finally caught him for the record. For the dad who watches every cryptid documentary and the one who goes camping just to get away from all of you. It is the costume people visit most on our site.
Try it with his photo
The dad who would set a place for Bigfoot at Christmas dinner
Victorian Bigfoot
Bowler hat, tweed three-piece suit and a brocade armchair, with Bigfoot standing behind him in the studio, a paw on his shoulder and holly on its chest. A Victorian Christmas portrait in warm sepia, for the dad who never quite stopped believing. Sample shown.
Try it with his photo
The dad who thinks he was born in the wrong century
Longhorn Rider
Riding a longhorn with horns as wide as the street, straight down the middle of an Old West town. For the dad who owns more than one pair of boots and has opinions about John Wayne movies.
Try it with his photoFunny dad gifts that aren't portraits
Not every laugh has to come from our shop. These pass the same test: he will remember them next year, which is more than you can say for most of what is under the tree.
- A leg lamp. In A Christmas Story (1983), the Old Man wins a lamp shaped like a woman's leg in fishnet stockings and calls it a "major award." Replicas are easy to find, and every dad who grew up watching the movie will get the joke before the box is fully open.
- A Griswold moose mug. The mugs shaped like a moose head from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) are a cult item. Fill it with eggnog and hand it over without a word.
- The start of a yearly tradition. Pick one ridiculous theme (a celebrity, an animal, a terrible kitchen gadget) and give him a new version every Christmas. By year three the whole family is waiting to see what it is.
- The front page from the day he was born. Many newspapers and archive services sell reprints of old front pages. Funny or not depends on the headlines, which is half the fun.
- Tickets to a comedy show. Not a gift card. Two tickets, a date, and you in the seat next to him laughing at the same jokes.
What not to buy him
A short list, because these are the funny gifts every dad already owns:
- Another "World's Best Dad" mug. He has three. One is holding pens.
- A gag gift that needs batteries to be funny. By New Year's the batteries are gone and so is the joke.
- A dad joke shirt. He will wear it, and then you will have to hear the joke on it out loud, forever.
The funny gifts that last are the ones about him, not about dads in general.
When to give it
A dad has more gift occasions in a year than he lets on:
Order dates for prints are further down.
White elephant, Yankee swap, Secret Santa: framed Dad gets fought over.
Third Sunday of June. Half the year to plan next year's joke.
50, 60, 70: the years he says "don't make a fuss."
For the dad who finally has time to tell all the stories again.
Will it actually look like him?
It is the right question, and the only way a portrait like this goes wrong. You see it before you pay: upload his photo, the preview is ready in about a minute, and you can try again or use another photo until it looks like him. The photo on the left is all it takes:
Nothing is printed until you have seen it, and a person checks every print by hand before it goes to the printer.
How to get it in time
- Make the preview. Upload his photo and the preview is ready in about a minute. If it isn't him yet, try again or use another photo.
- Hand check. Once you order, a person checks the print by hand, usually within 2 business days.
- Printing and delivery. Printing takes 2 to 5 business days. Delivery is free and usually takes 2 to 6 business days to Ireland, the US, Canada and Australia, and 5 to 20 business days elsewhere.
For Christmas 2026, we recommend ordering by December 1 for Ireland, the US, Canada and Australia, and by November 13 for other countries. These are recommendations with a buffer, not carrier guarantees, and December post is slow.
Quick answers
What is a funny Christmas gift for a dad who wants nothing?
Something with him in it. He means it when he says he needs nothing, and he is right: he does not need another thing. A portrait of himself riding a dinosaur is not a thing he needs. It is a story he gets to tell.
Where do I get a good photo of him?
Any clear, front-facing photo of his face works, even a phone snap from a family dinner. The hat, the suit and the dinosaur come with the portrait. If he hates having his picture taken, that makes the surprise even better.
Is it a real old photograph?
No, and we never pretend it is. It is a new portrait made with AI from your photo, in the style of an old print. You see it before you pay, and a person checks every print by hand.
Can my siblings and I be in it with him?
Each portrait shows one person: Dad. If the whole family wants in, order one for each of you and hang them side by side. It makes a very strange family wall.
Is it a digital file or a print?
A print: a poster or a canvas, with or without a frame, in four sizes. A high-resolution digital file is included free with every print, so you can also share it in the family group chat. Delivery is free.
If your dad is also the grandpa who swears he wants nothing, I wrote a guide to gifts for grandpa who says he wants nothing. If he would rather be out on the water, try funny fishing gifts for men, and if he really does believe in Bigfoot, there is a whole guide to Bigfoot gifts for men. For the man who is impossible to shop for in general, there is Christmas gifts for the man who has everything.
Socks keep his feet warm. This one gets brought up every Christmas for the next twenty years.
Pick his costume.
14 costumes, a free preview in about a minute, and free delivery.
Try it with his photo