Why I Hate White Elephants...

One of my least favorite things in the entire universe is white elephant exchanges.  Invariably, and I mean every.single.time, I get the crap present.  I knew this but never said anything about it to anyone until Kevin mentioned it during the holidays.  I didn’t realize that he noticed but he did.

His work did a gift exchange at their party.  The difference being is that the owner bought all the gifts and they were not cheap gifts.  As we watched, there were a few things that we nudged each other and nodded approvingly.  There were others that I was like “Umm, no. don’t choose a present that is that shape.”  Those were the kitchen appliances, like mixers and toasters. 

Kevin ended up choosing an expensive multi-tool, a definite boy thing.  He was mildly excited about it but not over the moon. It’s not really something he will carry with him and use frequently. He has some of my gift exchange karma, I think.

Now, fast forward to my work party.  I’m in a room with twenty people, many of whom I don’t know.  I’ve worked here for just over ninety-days at this point.  This gift exchange was $10 gift cards so not a bad idea, really.  Until it was.

I bought a Fred Meyer/Kroger card because a) I forgot about it and 2) I went with practicality. 

Yeah, I totally chose my own card.  They were all in all the same envelopes so you couldn’t tell which was which.  I played it cool, figured that I guess it’s a win.  Then the boss stole it from me so I had to choose again. 

A coffee card…hooray! Except it was for a town fifteen minutes away.  (see? Bad karma)  Then someone stole it. (I know!)  I chose another gift card and it was for Itunes.   Sigh.  I’m not an Apple person, I hate their products, actually.  But I thought “Shiny side: I can give it to one of the kids for their stocking.” 

Then someone else who also had bad exchange karma and he caught my eye.  Silently we agreed to trade cards after it was all said and done.  Hooray!  We both worked it out.

It was a $10 gift card for wally world.  Not great and my first thought was like the Itunes card: I’ll just use it on the kids.  But then I didn’t.  Fast forward one month and I’m shopping for a mattress topper.  I spent a little more than I planned because I had a ten dollar gift card.

I swear to sweet little eight pound baby jesus this is true:  It didn’t work.  I know!

Now I mentioned in a previous post that my mother-in-law wanted to do a gift exchange at Christmas for the adults.  We were against it because there is a person in the family who is sensitive pants and ugh, just no. 

We agreed that the gifts should be $15-20 and to buy one boy gift and one girl gift.  I purposefully and thoughtfully chose gifts that people could use.  Something useful and not something off the sale rack.  Something I wouldn't mind getting myself.

Then my sister in law decided to look up games on the interwebs just to make it more awkward, I guess.  We all were given a gift then had to roll a die to see if we passed gifts left or right or kept our gift.  We did two rounds of this with eleven adults.  It was awkward and weird and we all hated it. (and totally effed the boy girl thing, by the way)

Yeah, I totally ended up with a gift I bought.  It was a gardening set so it wasn’t awful but it also wasn’t something I was excited about or needed.  Kevin got a Ten-in-One game set that we’ll never use. 

I returned the gardening set and spent the cash at the dollar store and second hand store.  I guess it was a win, other than just being annoyed.  the game set is just going to sit in a cupboard until I get frustrated looking at it and send it to Goodwill.

So, can we just not with the gift exchanges?  Someone is always unhappy, people are usually uncomfortable, and it rarely comes out fairly.  

Let's just give each other candy and move on with our lives.  No one hates candy, right?  I mean I'd literally rather have a white chocolate elephant shaped candy than endure a gift exchange.  Can someone make this happen before next Christmas?