The worst Christmas gifts: A decades-long contest that’s brought me closer to my aunt.

The gift arrived early, as it did every year, in a plain brown box. The year before, Aunt Ruby had sent me a rock adorned with a single, hot-glued earring and the words “Justin Bieber ate my ass.” The year before that, she gave my 8-year-old stepsister a black block of wood with “coal” written on it—and nothing else. A few years later, I hit her with a T-shirt that read, “I can smell your wiener from here.” When I was 22, she won handily with a faux children’s book titled The Little Penis: A Finger Puppet Parody Book. Every day, he’d bring home little piles of forgotten detritus that people cleaned out of their cars, presenting them like prized trophies to Ruby, who delighted at her husband’s demented ability to hunt and gather. One year, she dug through her overflowing T-shirt collection and found a tiny tank top that said “#1 Bitch.” I can’t even fit it over my head.