While gratitude is a great way to live your life, you have to admit, sometimes people can get you the weirdest presents.

Hope you have your fake smile ready, because there could be a few misjudged surprises under the Christmas tree.

For one family, they looked on in horror as their little boy opened a present from his uncle of a real mouse skeleton that had been wired together.

Recalling the experience on Reddit as an adult, the commentator said: "I was like seven, and I loved animals, so my uncle thought it was a nice present.

"He was absolutely right, though my parents didn't like it and, looking back, they probably threw it away first time we moved and told me it got lost."

While there's something a little bit off with gifting a child a mouse skeleton to anybody, one teenager couldn't help but query the present his grandparents got him.

"I love my grand-parents but... when I was 14 they gave me a book titled, 'How to accept your death'."

Somebody else chimed in: "When I was eight, my dad got me and my sister a packet of cheese and onion flavoured, dried crickets. That was it – with no explanation."

Another was given "a board game where you played as an octopus cultivating its garden".

While one Reddit contributor was gifted with garden gnomes, without having access to an outside space in their apartment, another received "edible crotchless panties from an aunt".

The post clarified: "I am a male. I looked around the room to see if I was being pranked, which no one seemed to be laughing."

Rationalising the weird gift, the contributor added: "My aunt's vision isn't great..."

One gilded lover received "catnip" from her then-boyfriend, but she didn't even own a cat.