White Elephant Gift Exchange

[kethria]

At the old lab we were at the holiday party always included a white elephant gift exchange (also known as a yankee swap) Basically people bring a gift (usually a gag gift or something tacky). You draw a number and then pick a gift. Then someone else can choose to "steal" your gift, or you can "steal" someone else's.

Anyhow I was always too shy to "steal" gifts... which resulted in me getting gems like a dented can of tuna and a box of burnt out light bulbs. What annoyed me is that 99% of people would bring a decent $5-$10 dollar gift, but there was the 1% that would say "Oh yeah... we have a gift swap today..." and drag something out of the trash (one year someone got a box of rocks... from the parking lot...)

Anyhow... after years of getting shafted when I would go buy a nice desk set or a little bag from a Bath store... I decided that was it.

Mom got a gift from one of her students. It was a ceramic elephant glued to a piece of cardboard that had been spray-painted gold and then mounted on styrofoam balls also painted gold. The cardboard was covered with plastic gold coins. It was hideous. Absolutely hideous.


Mom thanked her kid, brought it home and then showed it to me en route to the garbage can. I grabbed it and said that this was the PERFECT contribution to the white elephant gift exchange, it was even an elephant! I saved this thing for 5 months, waiting for December.

The party rolls around again and my statue is wrapped and placed under the tree.

People start opening gifts.

And they are all lovely. I mean really really nice stuff. Bottles of wine, mugs, candles. No tuna, no light bulbs, no rocks. And to make it worse, a new scientist from Korea gets my gift. She had been here I think a week.  I was mortified. "Hi, welcome to Maryland! Here's a hideous piece of crap for your first Christmas here with us!"

She was very gracious. I apologized profusely.

And that was the last one I attended.

Anyone else have any stories?

[magicdomino]

The gag gifts in my office's Dirty Santa are gradually disappearing, as "good" gifts are more likely to inspire stealing frenzies.  And stealing frenzies are what make "Dirty Santa/Yankee Swaps" fun.  Still, there is one person that you have to watch for.  Twice, he has given gifts that look like they are worth much more than the $10 limit.  Rationally, you have to know that no one is going to give a pound box of Godiva chocolates for a $10 gift exchange.  But greed took over and that box went round and round.  After the exchange was over, the final owner discovered that beneath the perfectly tied ribbon and golden box were . . . sardines. 

But we know our jokester now.  And I would have loved to steal his contribution to last year's exchange:

http://www.officeplayground.com/catapult.html?gclid=CKOMlYLGspACFShsGgodWGyrMQ

[ITSJUSTME]

Years and years ago I had my fitst experience with the gift swap.  We were all about 12, all Girl Scouts and it seems a party with gift swap was the thing to do.  The limit was $2 - long enough ago that $2 was a fortune to me.

I went to a gift shoppe and bought what I thought was a beautiful gift - a glass bottle with a stopper and a design of wheat or flowers or something etched on the side.  The woman at the shop wrapped it in tissue and put it in a beautiful box, which I took home and wrapped in Christmas paper.

This was not a swap where you stole another person's gift - everyone pulled a number or some such and that's the gift they got.

Another girl got a gift that was a glass jar about the same size as mine, filled with crummy candy from the drugstore - with the $1.99 price tag still stuck on it.  I believe you can still buy these for $2 or $3 at K-Mart or Walgreens.

The girl who got my gift opened the box, pulled out the glass jar, sneered at it and loudly yelled "Where's my candy?"  pointed at me and yelled "SHE ate all my candy!"

I have hated gift swaps ever since.  That was also the end of Girl Scouts for me.

[kethria]

I bring it up because my significant other had one in the office today and he got the nicest gift first round and of course it was stolen... it was a tool set. I think he ended up with a bar compass. I'm kind of excited about that though.

[auntiem]

We just had one last night for my SO's new workplace. Apparently, the guy my SO replaced used to wrap up things like enema bags and such. I agree though that it should be a semi desirable item or a joke one like the elephant (if you are going to go over the top go for it!). It is more fun because more people will "steal".  We now have a three foot penquin chalk board (which my SO actually stole). I will wait until he goes to pack him with the xmas stuff to say anything about it.

[twinkletoes]

I celebrate Christmas every year with the same group of people.  The first year we got together, we thought it would be more fun to do a white elephant than to worry about buying gifts for each other.  There are four teachers in the group - believe me, there's a load of stuff that gets dumped at the white elephant!

It's really fun, as no one buys anything.  It's all junk gifts you've received over the previous year, or weird things from the dollar store.  And every year, there are a few items that are the "things" to steal.  One year, it was a set of chili pepper lights - which were really popular, as many of us were in college at the time.  Another year, there was a big bag of good candy - the person who brought it was a diabetic and couldn't eat it.  We all fought over that one!  Another year, my mom (one of the teachers) got a set of shot glasses.  Mom doesn't drink - but the guy who walked home with them was eager to share them with his roommates.  Hee.  We've had lots of good times with it. 

[Sirius]

My Bible study has a white elephant gift exchange every year.  Each year, the leader always makes it clear that the gifts are supposed to be the tackiest, ugliest, most ridiculous thing you can find around the house, and wrap it so that it's impossible to tell what it is. No one is supposed to bring anything nice or new.  This party is always eagerly awaited and is well attended.  Our party was last Sunday, and Mr. Sirius and I brought two canvas grocery bags full of "stuff" from my desk, plus a couple of items that we'd bought throughout the year.  You know the type of thing:  you see them in the store, you buy them, you take them home, then wonder what possessed you to buy it, and it's too cheap to take back to the store.  In exchange I got someone's Valentine's gift teddy bear; the bear is white and the soles of its feet are red hearts, and it has an attached heart-shaped gift box with squashed flowers on top.  Mr. Sirius got two inflatable guitars that were packed in a container that had held Belgian chocolates.  Other gifts were wind-up sushi toys and a head massager that looked like some kind of alien being with wire legs and an ugly wizard's head on top.

I think the people who bring nice, new things to a white elephant gift exchange are missing the point.  This is supposed to be a fun exchange of tacky gifts and junk, not a contest to see who can bring the nicest present.  If it's supposed to be nice gifts, then make it a regular gift exchange.

[momto3daughters]

Years and years ago I had my fitst experience with the gift swap.  We were all about 12, all Girl Scouts and it seems a party with gift swap was the thing to do.  The limit was $2 - long enough ago that $2 was a fortune to me.

I went to a gift shoppe and bought what I thought was a beautiful gift - a glass bottle with a stopper and a design of wheat or flowers or something etched on the side.  The woman at the shop wrapped it in tissue and put it in a beautiful box, which I took home and wrapped in Christmas paper.

This was not a swap where you stole another person's gift - everyone pulled a number or some such and that's the gift they got.

Another girl got a gift that was a glass jar about the same size as mine, filled with crummy candy from the drugstore - with the $1.99 price tag still stuck on it.  I believe you can still buy these for $2 or $3 at K-Mart or Walgreens.

The girl who got my gift opened the box, pulled out the glass jar, sneered at it and loudly yelled "Where's my candy?"  pointed at me and yelled "SHE ate all my candy!"

I have hated gift swaps ever since.  That was also the end of Girl Scouts for me.

This is where you gs leader should have stepped in and taught about being thankful for the gifts you recieve. We do this only the girls are NOT allowed to spend any money at all. They have to find something they like at home but no longer play with and bring it wrapped. After this year we may change how I do it as we do numbers but not thinking this year I have daisy all the way to cadets (k to 8th grader) and the one 6th grader got a baby doll (oops) she was very gracious and my dd went up to her privatly and traded her stuffed horse so the girl would have something a little more appropriate age wise (my dd was also to old for the doll but she told the littler girl how much she LOVED the doll).

[kethria]

I'll always remember the year that the Research Leader gifted a hideous velvet painting of Elvis that he acquired with the office. Someone unwrapped it, we all laughed and then the recipient said "Oh my GOD. This is signed by Elvis on the back!"

The director turned ghost-white and swooned a little. Then the recipient said "Gotcha!"

We laughed for a long time.

[magicdomino]

The results of today's Dirty Santa:

Gave -- Bottle of Vampyre Cabernet Sauvagnon (sp?)

Received -- Stocking full of coal (bubble gum and chocolate)

 

[hope]

I have some ugly snowmen placemats that MIL gave to me 3 years ago.  I am dying to send them off into a White Elephant gift exchange but at work they decided to do away with that and instead have a $10 gift card exchange