The White Elephant in the Room

To say that I love the Christmas season would be a grand understatement. I’m 32 years old and I can still be found wearing a pointy red hat with white fluffy trim at work. I don’t have kids, but I have an impressive collection of animated holiday specials that I watch non-stop starting the day after Thanksgiving. I love the food, the smell of pine, the decorations and even the occasional mall crowds that more often than not give many a sense of childlike magic long gone from their daily drudgery.

There is one thing though, one twisted tradition that has the ability to turn coworkers, friends and family members into pompous, greedy and downright sadistic creatures. It’s the White Elephant Gift Exchange and I HATE it. This so called party game involves the opening and subsequent stealing of gifts by party-goers goes by many names that should drive my point home: Thieving Secret Santa, Selfish Santa, Nasty Christmas, Dirty Santa, or Scrooge’s Christmas. According to Wikipedia, the term white elephant refers to a gift whose cost exceeds its usefulness. The game SHOULD be played only with gag-gifts, but more often than not, guests are asked to spend X number of dollars prior to the exchange and this is where it starts down the path of darkness.

Why do things get ugly? In no particular order, here are some personally witnessed scenarios and reasons why I avoid this game like Toys R Us on December 24th:

1. The Pompous Giver – One of the base rules for this game is to wrap the gift you bring in otherwise unidentifiable paper so that guests don’t know who it has come from. Inevitably, being that this is a game of theft, one gift arises as the most sought after and it takes but a heartbeat for the individual who purchased the golden goose to come forward and brag about how “they couldn’t have possibly known how popular it was going to be”. The giver’s surprise has been known to last sometimes 365 days. The truth is that just about everyone is praying for their gift to be the coveted one, but no one will admit to it.

2. The Offended Giver – The polar opposite to #1, one unlucky parcel will ultimately remain un-stolen and thus unwanted. This leaves its purchaser to feel as if they’ve failed at their shopping task and ultimately embarrassed, even if no one knows who it came from in the first place. I’ve have personally seen tears shed on more than one occasion by Offended Givers and, needless to say, this can be death to a good Christmas party.

3. The Scrooge – I get that people have budgets, particularly around the holidays, which is why these White Elephant games should call for less than 5 dollar joke gifts. That said, no gift exchange I’ve witnessed in the past 10 years has called for spending no less than 15 per person, making it obvious when someone unwraps a $3 Christmas tree ornament or a $5.95 picture frame. Some cheap jerk spent 4 minutes in the clearance aisle at the grocery store before coming to the party and often leave with whatever Pompous Giver up there brought. Leading us to:

4. The Poor Unfortunate Soul – These are the otherwise happy party-goers who played by the rules, thought everything was holly jolly, but leaves feeling completely jipped because they got stuck with something either The Offended Giver or The Scrooge brought to the festivities. Their return on investment just went down the tubes like left-out eggnog. This often results in a transformation that can take from a few days to an entire year wherein the Unfortunate Soul becomes The Scrooge. Sadly, this is irreversible.

5. The Conspirators – These partners in crime work to bypass the rules of the game. A typical exchange permits the theft of a gift no more than twice, or having no more than three owners. When a guest has a gift stolen from them, they are permitted to either steal another gift or choose an unwrapped item. They MAY NOT steal the previous item back. Knowing this The Conspirators will execute one of two plots. Either they agree to steal another highly sought after item to allow the original guest to then steal back what was stolen (rendering it then dead) or they will bypass the game altogether and trade items after the game has ended. Both plots lead to an increase in Offended Givers, which then leads to an increase of Scrooges, thus snowballing the problem.

6. The Overzealous Santa – Sometimes taking the form of the Pompous Giver, but not always, is the Overzealous Santa. This guest, perhaps unknowingly, spends considerably and obviously more than the agreed upon amount set by the party hosts. Not only can this lead to the birth of a Pompous Giver, but it makes everyone else feel like a Scrooge. Effectively, this would be as if everyone brought different coffee and tea gift packs, but one guy brings in Starbucks stock certificates. Way to ruin the bell curve, Richie Rich.

7. The Indian Giver – How many times have you seen this one? It’s a good rule of thumb to pick up a gift that you wouldn’t mind having yourself, since there’s a slight chance you may end up having it forced on you in the end with no further trades possible. However, unwrapping the gift you yourself brought, or worse, stealing it from someone on your turn, is just tasteless whether anyone knows it was what you brought or not. Congratulations, you just bought yourself a gift! How thoughtful. Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.

Do you get what I’m saying? I hope this has been something of a humorous read, but I think you’ll find you’ve seen these types before. I’m willing to bet that a few of you might feel a little guilty too, but realize that I’m not hating the players. I’m hating the game. The holidays are a time for selfless giving, charity and good will. Let’s not celebrate with a game that promotes greed, jealousy and avarice.

Anyone up for charades instead?