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After doing the Christmas thing for 30-some years, you'd think my husband, Brian, and I would know how to handle all things festive. But there's one custom that continues to confound us. It rears its ugly head each December in offices, club meeting halls, and yes, even churches across the country. This fiendish ritual is, of course, the White Elephant Gift Exchange. Sounds innocent enough, doesn't it? Not if you're the new kid on the block.
The main problem with the White Elephant party is that every group has its own collective definition of what constitutes an appropriate gift. The problem is, that definition varies from group to group.
Take last Christmas, for instance. My husband's new job recently had brought us to the East Coast. He showed up at home one workday morning in December frantically opening cabinets and calling to me, "Honey, I forgot about this White Elephant thing at work. So did Michael."
He was seeking two items of dubious worth for himself and his new intern. As I eagerly joined the search, I asked him, "Sweetie, are you sure it's a White Elephant thing? Is it what we're used to?"
A Pointer Sisters LP from the '80s … a pooper-scooper … a set of never-opened Mt. Rushmore coasters … a singing fish for the wall … the list of acceptable gifts is limitless. As long as it's nothing useful, valuable, or pretty, it's a White Elephant in our book. The tackier, the better.
Like the cedar shoe stretcher we once gave. It looked like something Donald Trump would have a closet full of, but it brought only sneers from our down-to-earth, middle-class friends. We deemed it a success because fun is the whole point of the White Elephant custom.
Ha.
On this particular December morning, my husband assured me that, yes, this was the same thing. Silly little trinkets, he was told by coworkers. Gag gifts. Nothing useful, valuable, or pretty.
So we wrapped up two little nothings, one for him and one for young Michael, and I confidently sent him on his way.
When my husband opened the first gift, he knew he was in trouble. It was an indoor electric grill—a George Foreman. The kind that's slanted for all your grease-drainage needs. In the tradition of the Elephant, the grill was snatched away by the next guy in line. (At least that custom was the same!)
Brian watched the horror unfold as gift after gift produced nothing remotely in the neighborhood of a bleached African mammal with a prehensile trunk. Now in a cold sweat, he scanned the crowd for the deceptive coworkers (who later claimed innocence), but none of them would make eye contact.
Ultimately, Brian landed a $20 gift certificate from Applebee's. Someone actually had driven to the restaurant in the next city, opened his wallet, and purchased this little piece of paper for the party. By my calculations, this required way too much effort. In addition, it was useful and worth actual money. All the things a White Elephant is not.
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