One Christmas, almost a decade ago, my then-18-year-old boyfriend surprised me with a large, unwieldy package. Enthusiastically I tore off the crudely taped snowman wrapping paper and giant red bow to reveal...a mounted deer head. Yes. You read that correctly: A Mounted Deer Head.

Did I mention I was president of my high school's Animal Protection Club?

So, yeah, that present took first place in my Top 10 Most Inexplicable and Heinous Gifts of All Time, a list which also includes the war novel "All Quiet on the Western Front," a vacuum cleaner, a dentist appointment, and yes, a cardboard dolphin mobile.

Although one almost expects disappointingly banal gifts from grandmothers (socks...again? Wow, thanks!), we justifiably raise the bar for our significant others. In other words, a war novel from a boyfriend does not a romantic holiday make.

There are worse gifts, of course. Like the one broker Chris Cullen, 28, got from the girl he started seeing two days before Christmas last year.

"I replied, 'Thanks, but I got you nothing,'" he says. " I would also like to point out that the gift she gave me was shoplifted. I realized this while trying to put the shirts on and the security tag scratched me." Unsurprisingly, "that relationship ended quite badly."

And speaking of badly-ended relationships, try the gift that Gridskipper blogger Josh Stein sent his ex after she not-so-gracefully dumped him this year, just before the holidays: an iPod with 600 photos of them together, along with one uplifting song called "Tears of Rage." Adding to the cheer, Stein had it laser engraved, "You've made a terrible mistake." Just proving there's more than one way to say "Merry Christmas, loser!"

Of course, sometimes it's the gift YOU give that stinks. Angela Casolaro, 22, wanted to get her boyfriend, "a total guy's guy" who "loves football, gambling, cars and meat," something "special but not overboard."

After deciding to buy him a personalized T-shirt, she wracked her brain for days about the appropriate slogan, first considering "Meat Loving Frat Boy," then reconsidering. ("I was told by several friends that a shirt like that would NOT go over well," Casolaro said. "I didn't really get why not -- I thought it was cute!!") She settled for an olive green tee with fuzzy blue letters that read, "I Heart Meat."

She wasn't sure that was enough. "I wanted something more flippant," she explained, "so I got him a stuffed animal depicting a virus. He's a chemistry person, so I thought it was fitting and sort of funny."

It didn't really work out as she had hoped. "Suffice it to say, he's never worn the shirt, the stuffed animal sits in a drawer, and I was mortified when I actually had to give it to him. It was the weirdest gift I've ever given, and I don't know WHAT I was thinking," she said, still cringing over the memory.

"He got me white tulips and wine. At least one of us is normal."