Of White Elephants and Gifting

We have gained a reputation with my husbands work party for having the craziest W.E. gifts. it is hard to top yourself each year. Last years was our best ever! We bought a nice box of chocolates. when the gift was opened the recipient found a picture of us eating the chocolates and about 4 half eaten chocolates left in the box. But since most of the people coming bring nice gifts, we also included a gift card.

One year for a White Elephant, my gift was a set of 10 different lottery tickets. However, the catch is that one of them was a fake winner in the amount of $10,000. That got traded many times and eventually ended up w/ one of my uncles that had recently been layed off from IBM! Seeing his face light up after scratching the winning (fake) ticket is definitely pricelessā€¦

Usually give a goofy gift. That Iā€™d think no one would want and then put lottery tickets hidden in the gift. But a lot of times people actually wanted the goofy gift. Once I gave a white elephant saying I thought thatā€™s what you were suppose to give. After a few years of lottery tickets people would fought to get the gift they thought I brought. So this year I still gave lottery tickets but they were already scratched off. My explaination I just wanted to see if you had any winners.

ive got one tomorrow and what i plan on doing is taking a picture of my face, and blowing it up to be the size of a page
then im going to sign it in sharpie
it most likely will get laughs

The best gift I ever gave for WE was a giant donkey that would glow in the dark, it was meant for an outdoor nativity scene. It was actually exchanged three times.

Best/Worst gift recieved was a bottle of Boones Farm with a travel sized bottel of KY lotion and 50 dollar sears gift card taped to it. Needless to say the 50 bucks was worth the humiliation, however joke was on me, the card had no money on it!

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This is such a better name than ā€œChinese gift exchangeā€ which is what they call it around here.

Best gifts Iā€™ve done and here a humorously irritating gift to get were:
(note that I work with a church youth group, we have a $5 max)

  1. all time favorite, I still laugh even now: (husband gave) photo album with every sleeve filled with pictures of himself dressed up as other people. This took some time, but it was hilarious to see the kids reaction, lets just say he asked if i wanted to buy it from him for $5ā€¦i declined, seeings how i had the duplicates).

  2. not nearly as awesome but still funny: coloring book with each page already colored completely.

I win. I once recieved the cremated ashes of a co-workerā€™s father who had died a few weeks prior to the party. The theme was ā€œSomething that is not needed anymore.ā€

Knowing the guy (the dead one), he would have gotten a big kick being passed around a w/e exchange. My wife and I took ā€˜dadā€™ around to all of the tourist destinations in town, and had our pictures taken with the box. He even went to several other exchanges, and somehow, we always went home with him!

Later, after the Christmas season, the co-worker and I had a nice internment ceremony, but I canā€™t say where. Letā€™s just say that ā€˜dadā€™ would have approved!

One of the best I have seen was a large box, beautifully wrapped and inside was a pair of LIVE lobster!

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Our family circulates an old 1X4 piece of wood wall hanging that someone shellacked and added goofy pics of the boys when they were little (bad hair, missing teeth, etc). NOBODY wants to get that awful thing, and whomever does get it tries to disguise it for the next go around. Last year someone sawed it in half and put a hinge on it and hid it in a great looking toolbox. Hysterical!

i got this shirt once :slight_smile:

and iā€™m asian. i was rather confused.

You have a great idea,I think iā€™ll try it this year. I have five grown kids frm 25 to 37 and thats a good way to save money for Christmas,and there wives toā€¦ Thanks a lotā€¦ Pat

w/e is a yearly tradition among my friends and the competition is stiff. alcohol and kitchen items seem to be the biggest hit. last year i bought a three piece casserole set with carrier (and appointed a post-it to the box instructing the future owner that crab dip should be placed in one of the dishes). it was a highly coveted item. what did i end up with? a hello kitty waffle maker (the average age of this group is 30). who brought the damn waffle maker? the guy that ended up with my casserole set, hence the reason iā€™m doing reconnaissance work tonight: revenge!

Doiliesā€¦they come back year after yearā€¦each year they are accompanied by something diffrent. One year someone got a really old broken modem wrapped in an old doily.

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I have been put in charge of a white elephant EXOTIC Gift Exchange. Any good rules for this game to make it more fun would be greatly appreciated.

In the many years of my grandmother playing this white elephant game, I have come to realize that it is a very evil game. When in reality it should be fun. If one of the younger grandkids likes something, and then it gets ā€œstolenā€ from them, they throw a temper tantrum. Grandma laughs, for what reason I do not know. For playing this very game, I no longer attend Christmas parties with family. This is a worse game in my eyes than the Ouija board!!! Even the devil wonā€™t play it!