Worst Holiday Presents: ChapStick Anyone?

It's not as though I don't like a good nut.

But as the firstborn granddaughter I was still surprised that on my 18th Christmas my grandma gave me one jar of salted roasted peanuts. But I was grateful. She gave my sister a green tube of ChapStick.

I guess seniority has its privileges.

My older brother, a senior at USC,  received one lime green bath towel.

"Not even a matching set?" he muttered on the car ride home, before we all burst out laughing.

After years of Christmas morning letdowns, in which I dutifully wrote out Dear Santa letters that Santa dutifully ignored, my earliest memories of Christmas mornings are this: Toys with no batteries, and the stores were closed.

The holiday just wasn't my parents' strong card. Now, one of our family's Christmas traditions is to find great hilarity in some of the so-bad-they're-funny gifts.

One year my Dad just paper-clipped checks to the Christmas tree. (He was understandably depressed after my mom died.)

We were thrilled for him when he remarried. But his new, very British wife used the words "brilliant" and "lovely" to describe every present from her, as she watched us open them.

One year she shopped for us on behalf of my grandma, who was horrified to see that she had somehow given me a loud pimp-daddy disco cap. And Grandma Sam looked perplexed not to remember buying her very stylish grandson a pair of hideous canary yellow and green socks--then looked murderous upon discovering that she had "bought" my stepmom a $300 quilt.

We adored Grandma Sam, but one of the reasons that she was able to support herself as a widow until 92 was because she never spent more than $20 on a gift in her life.

Enjoying the absurdity of what is a relatively meaningless part of the holiday has become part of our family story: For instance, my brother shopping at the Nordstrom half-yearly sale each July and then, come December, offering his four children the ease of reaching into his bag of purchases and selecting a gift for him, for which they cut him a check.

Can a Christmas gift registry be next? Wait for it.

I guess that could work for some, like my newlywed friend whose husband gave her a pre-wrapped windshield-cleaning kit.

But a registry would mean that nobody would get a nutcracker moose that drops the goods from under its tail. Now that was funny. I wish I could find the picture. (Because you're right, I'm easily entertained.) A good-bad gift!

The mailbox that loudly plays "Rockin' Robin" each time it's opened? A bad-bad gift.

So enjoy the gift lore, and share with us your own.