A White Elephant was held over at Glendia’s house last night. White Elephant Gift Exchange is described as:
Traditionally, a “White Elephant” is something lying around the house that you don’t want (some horridly ugly item that someone gave you as a gift or some other item unwanted for some reason). I am of the belief that in most parts of the country, if you tell someone to bring a White Elephant gift it will almost certainly be a gag gift and not something genuinely useful or desirable.
The type of gift exchange that you have described, I have always heard referred to as a “Yankee Swap”.
THE GIFTS:
- This party’s gift theme is XYZ.
- The gift should be valued as close to $xx.00 as is reasonable.
- The gift should be something someone would actually want or use. It should be in new or good condition.
- The gift should be wrapped or in an envelope before arriving to the party. Gift bags are OK only if a wrapped item is inside.
- Gift certificates are OK only if it is accompanied by some other item as part of the gift. For instance, a $xx Starbucks gift certificate, by itself, is not OK, but a $yy Starbucks gift certificate together with a coffee mug is OK.
- As guests arrive to the party, the gifts should be placed in an area where few people can see who brought which gift. All efforts should be made to hide who brought which gift.
THE GAME:
- Each guest who wishes to participate must contribute a gift. Everyone sits or stands in roughly a circle around the pile of gifts.
- Prepare slips of paper equal to the number of gifts with clearly written numbers. Be sure to distinguish 6 from 9, 1 from 7. Each participating guest draws a number and holds onto that slip of paper.
- On the first turn, the guest with paper slip #1 chooses a gift, opens it, and all admire it.
- On the second turn, the guest with paper slip #2 gets the choice of “stealing” any unwrapped gift (#1’s) or choosing a wrapped one. If #2 steals #1’s gift, then #1 must open a wrapped gift.
- On the third turn, the guest with paper slip #3 gets the choice of “stealing” any unwrapped gift (#1’s or #2’s) or choosing a wrapped one.
The game continues based on the following:
- If a gift is stolen from you, you can steal a gift (within limits, described below), or open a wrapped one.
- The turn proceeds until a wrapped gift is chosen.
- A gift cannot be immediately stolen back from the guest who just stole it.
- The fourth “owner” of a gift gets to keep it. The gift is “dead” after it has been stolen three times.
- “Owners” of “live” gifts must keep them visible and hold them up when requested.
- The gift exchange ends when the last wrapped gift is opened. Usually, guests are encouraged to perpetuate the gift stealing as long as there are “live” gifts, but no one is obligated to do this.
The set price for our gifts was $20 and I got something from the Microsoft Company Store before I left from Seattle: Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000. It sells on Amazon.com for $37, but with employee discount, it was a lot closer to the set price of $20.
While we were waiting for everyone to arrive, Glendia being the host, made baked some cookies and put ice cream on top of it which was really good, but also super sweet. She also busted out the IceWine (Eiswein) which she brought back from Germany and shared it with us. I declined since I didn’t like wine either. Ohfuee was toasting to every hot actress he could think of.
We modified the rules a bit since there were only 8 people: Antegra, Glendia, JoeHK, LilSneezy, Ohfuee, DNG, Chheang, and I. Also, THE GIFTS RULE #6 was completely violated because almost everyone knew at least what one other person brought. I think the only 2 people who did not know any other gift was Chheang and me. Quite a few interesting gifts showed up and I ended with the Puzz3D Empire State Building which I stole from Antegra.
Some needed to leave as midnight came along because they wanted to open presents with the family. The rest of us stayed to play Taboo. There weren’t really any teams, we just went around in circles guessing. There were moments that were so funny when someone would say something like: “Lily is BLANK.” or “What you do when you’re bored.” or “Heang does this to me.” Glendia had to drive to Vegas the next day, so we left around 3am.
LilSneezy was hungry so we ended up at ABC Cafe. Almost everyone ordered their $2.29 wonton noodles. Cheap. Cheap. Ohfuee also ordered a warm milk with raw egg drink. I didn’t dare to try it, but supposedly it wasn’t that bad. Suddenly out of nowhere, Kalekkos shows up. Apparently, it’s the thing to hang out at ABC Cafe at 5am in the morning on Christmas.
Check out the photos I took.
PhatFreeza would be happy to see this.
Guys awaiting for the present stealing to begin!