Lat year, I got a pair of Calvin Klein, black, size 6, seamless, pantyhose from my MIL. I am a size 10 and the last dress I wore, I was married in!
She is not homebound, not hurting financially–my husband got a nice CD player, my SIL got a leather coat, the kids all got nice stuff.
Ooh-almost forgot, got a pair of pantyhose for pants, too (beige).
Bitch.
Yeah, I’ll vote the used parachute panties for first place too, because of the sheer disgusting nature of it. Fake money and IOU reminder (would that be a YOM, You Owe Me?) second place second for the sheer meanness.
The dead grasshoppers belong in a different category: They win the Most Surreal.
The used deoderant and used nose hair clippers though… hmm. We need another award category for those.
This was a birthday present rather than a Christmas present, but. . .
My husband and I had been going out for almost a year when my 20th birthday (first one with him) came 'round. He was going to come over, and we were going to spend part of the day together (it was a Sunday).
So he comes over and–yay!–he has prezzies! Upon further inspection, they are a sculpture of a rock with a flower on it, engraved with the word “Inspiration,” and a poster of a fluffy kitten.
I know most of you have not seen my possessions, but rest assured, those items do not belong among them. I was sorely disappointed–not because I was expecting big-huge-presents, but because I felt like, if he thought I’d like these things, he didn’t know me at all, wasn’t paying attention, and put little-to-no-thought into the presents.
I found out that he’d forgotten, and that the presents were actually picked out by his mom, who had remembered, and who had also remembered that I like rocks and cats. Now I just find it funny :).
Stationery. Dime store stationery.
Now, stationery is not necessarily a bad gift. My aunt G. gave me stationery for my birthday several times, but it always had a cartoon character or some kind of cool pattern, and it was part of a larger assortment of gifts. But this was different.
We were at Aunt J. and Uncle F’s house on Christmas Eve. That family opens their gifts on the Eve, and my wonderful cousin T. informed me that there was nothing under the tree for me because I wasn’t a member of the family. So I went to the basement to cry. Some time later, T. opens the door and shoves a small, flat package at me. Dime store stationery. Oh joy.
Now, I don’t know how we ended up at their house for Christmas Eve, and my mom claims not to remember even being there, much less why she couldn’t have brought something for me to open. But I strongly suspect that a) we weren’t invited and b) the stationery was a matter of Aunt J. saying, “Oh crap; Rilchie’s still in the basement sulking. Quick, find something and wrap it up for her.”
Forgot to add: NinjaChick, hang on to that tin-can Bible! You’ll need it when you’re a sophomore! Okay, granted you might want to use a different translation, but you’ll get so much milage out of that story the first time you bring it to seminar!
Okay, forgive the triple post.
{{{{{{{{{{{Jeep’s Phoenix}}}}}}}}}}}} I hadn’t seen your post when I submitted my entry. That is AWFUL. At least what happened to me wasn’t organized, protracted assholishness. And I was 10, not 5. Dang, now I don’t feel so bad.
My grandmother once gave me a box of Post It Notes. A rather lame gift… made worse…
My in laws (at that time) both worked for 3M. There was no Post It Note (or sandpaper shortage) at my house. Plus my father is an office supply manufacturer’s rep - so office supplies aren’t in short supply regardless.
Really uglyass shirt. Long-sleeved, beige rayon with disgusting olive-green-and-maroon paisley tendrils at belly level. It reminded me of the national costume of some backward former Soviet republic. I proceeded to put on a dorky stocking cap, strap on my accordion, and have several gag pictures taken before returning it to the store.
One year when I was a kid my mother was really sick right around Christmas and couldn’t do any shopping. She gave money to a coworker of hers, who was about, oh, 15 years older than me and pretty “hip.”
“Abbie doesn’t like dolls,” she tells her before she goes off to shop.
I got 2 dolls. Plus a bunch of other stuff that sucked. Not bad stuff, just totally not “me.” This woman knew me pretty well but I figure she just randomly grabbed things off the shelves.
Then there was the year that a friend’s mother knitted me this shawl out of pink yarn. You’d have to see it to understand how bad it was. I laughed until I realized it wasn’t a gag gift. :smack:
In 6th grade or so one of the popular girls in my class gave all the girls in the class a present. Mine was a diary: which would have been perfect. Thing is, once I looked at it closely I realized it was missing the cover and a few pages, meaning it was old and something she wanted to get rid of.
The worst of our family:
From my mothers sister: to my father, red silk boxers, reading “Merry Christmas” embroidered across the butt; the kicker: to my 12-year old sister, the same year a red silk thong, embroidered with “Merry Christmas” across the front.
Tell me that isn’t disturbing.
We could have a whale of a time with this idea. Combine it with the Secret Santa and find a really awful present for our recipient and then publish what hideous things we receive…oh the joy of looking for the worst gift ever!
Aww, c’mon - my brother receiving a block of wood with 3 hooks screwed in has to win some kind of place in the top 10, surely? 
mkay - time to come clean - I may have given a Worst Gift this year. Not sure if I can call it a Christmas gift, since I gave it to my Jewish BIL, but anyway…
BIL recently went on a health foods kick, prompted largely by SuperSize Me. He’s been cooking up a storm and has lost quite a bit of weight, is feeling healthy, etc.
Now everyone in my family knows I started being a thrift store shopper when I became pregnant with my twins last year. Only way to go with two babies.
So when one of his gifts was a stack of older “Health Food” cookbooks, it was just kind of assumed that I’d gotten them while thrift shopping. I tried to play it off for a minute, but had to give off all pretense when BIL opened the cover of one of them and read the inscription “To Mikey, Hope this helps you in your new healthy habits, love Marla, Christmas 1976”.
Believe it or not, my then girlfriend (now wife) wanted a blender on our first Christmas together. I thought it was odd, especially since we both loved the Steve Martin version of Father Of The Bride, when the couple has a huge fight because he gets her a blender as a gift. Be that as it may, I got her an Osterizer* and she loved it.
[size=1] in addition to a pendant I had made for her out of a topaz from my collection.
My brother and I were born 13 months apart, and he is older. My Dad took him car shopping for his twenty-first birthday, the result being a $7,000 4WD.
I received my present yesterday: a $50 note.
Thanks so much Dad. I wonder, did he think I’d forget what my brother got? Or does he just not care?
Wow, that sucks. Unless your father has had a terrible reversal of fortune, of course. Then it still sucks, but at least he’s trying.
If it makes you feel better, my brother (*younger * than I am by 2 years) was given the family’s old car on his 16th birthday and taught how to drive by my parents. I, on the other hand, had to buy my own car (and they didn’t go guarantor) and pay for lessons from an instructor. Sadly, there can only be **one ** favourite kid.
Well, he does whinge about money, but he was doing that before he bought the car for my brother. My Mum is the complete opposite of my Dad, she is anal about making sure things are perfectly fair, and I’m very appreciative of that.
Your situation was pretty awful too. Did you bring it up with your parents?
(temporary thread derailment incoming)
It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. It’s not like I was ever in doubt that they loved me, they just have this freakish indulgent blind spot when it comes to my brother.
It’s good that your mum tries to keep things fair. My parents generally did keep things pretty much equal. Actually, the car wasn’t something that bothered me - there was only one car to be given away, and my brother was somewhat mechanically inclined, so that was sensible enough.
What hurt was the fact that neither would take the time to teach me to drive, and in fact said I couldn’t be trusted in their car… meaning I had to buy my own car before I could learn.
In an ironic twist, I’ve had two very minor traffic infringements* and no accidents in the 16-odd years I’ve been driving, where my brother has had several accidents (his fault) and any number of infringements. So I guess their judgment wasn’t all that great, huh?
(/thread derailment. Back to your scheduled programming.) 
Okay, I’ve got no personal good stories, but my friend Courtney from college had a zinger. Just so you know, Courtney’s father is a veterinarian, a very sweet man, but very bizarre.
One Xmas all the kids are unwrapping presents, and there’s a large box under the tree with Courtney’s mom’s name on it. Her mom is super-psyched. This HUGE box is for her. Her husband hands it to her, just beaming. He’s so proud of himself. She tears open the box, looks inside, and Courtney described to me this incredible look of horror that twisted across her mom’s face. She drops the box and bursts into tears.
What’s in the box, you ask? Well, you know when people take their puppies to the vet to get their ears clipped? Courtney’s dad had saved all the ear clippings from the pups that year, them arranged them in a little design on black velvet inside the box.
He gave his wife ear clippings from puppies. I don’t know if he thought this was romantic or what.
Oh my God, NMissi, I think you just beat Dark Prince.