That's really awful, and I'm sorry you had such a downer Yuletide, especially since I was continuously impressed by your treat count and wordcount total progress reports!

I'm wondering, though: how did you determine that not all the characters were not needed? Because if this was in the recipient's optional details (that you would have seen during Madness) or letter, that's something you can point to and say, "It would have been okay to be the only gift because the recipient made it clear that it was okay to use not all the characters." And if you'd gone through the mods to ask, they would have known (though I assume this isn't the case, since it's a treat, and I understand the mods don't pass questions for treaters).

So either the mods entirely missed this in the recip's info, in which case you could point this out, or you learned this in some kind of backchannel way that they couldn't possibly know about. I think if you would reply with the source of your information they would likely apologize and retract their reprimand, because the mods strike me as generally decent people who were scrambling to make sure everyone got a proper gift. But honestly, I would be furious and feel much the same as you.