Do You Like My White Elephant?

If you’ve worked in an office long enough or are part of a large family, you’ve probably been invited to a White Elephant party. They generally pop-up around Christmastime and require everyone to have a little sense of humor. They’re a combination of a gift exchange gathering meets best-poker-face meets hospitality extraordinaire. If you haven’t had the pleasure of participating in one of these events, you’re missing out!

Every person invited to the party brings a random gift, that they did not purchase, to exchange with the group. It can be anything. It’s usually a gift someone gave you that you haven’t had the heart to ship off to Good Will. I’ve seen gifts from toilet paper rolls (pre-covid of course) to really old cassette tapes, cans of corn to a baster, and a pair of gently used socks to a box of ribbon. The gift can be as abstract or as practical as you want. I actually received the best popcorn bowl ever (albeit ugly) at a white elephant party.

Once you have selected your “gift” to exchange, the idea is to make your item look attractive; pretty wrapping paper, exquisite bows, and deceivingly different-shaped packaging. Some wrap jobs have been pretty innovative. When you arrive at the party, all of the packages are placed in a pile in the middle of the room and the fun begins.

Each person participating selects a random number starting at one. This can be done by picking a number from a hat or some other method but the idea is that there is an order for guests to select a gift. The person with number one selects a gift first, opens it, and makes sure all other guests can see it. Subsequent players can either steal a previous person’s open gift or take a wrapped gift from the pile that they open. Any time a person has their gift stolen, they can either choose a new gift or steal from someone else (except the one that was just stolen from them). Is this making sense? This goes on and on until each person in the party now has a gift.

Once everyone has a gift, the first person who selected their gift gets to steal any gift they want from any other person (and puts their open gift back in the center of the room). Any person who has their gift stolen can either pick up the discarded gift or steal a gift from someone else (whose gift has not yet been stolen) until a player declines to steal a gift or there’s no one left to steal from. This ends the game.

Sometimes a host will add extra boundaries to keep the game moving based on the number of players such as allowing only 2-minutes per person to make their decision or limiting the number of times a particular gift can be stolen. These help make sure the game doesn’t go on all night and everyone can get to the appetizers.

So the next time you’re stumped for a party theme, consider this fun and entertaining way to amuse your guests and send them home with a gift they truly may have never bought themselves. But be warned, some white elephant gifts have a way of showing up again and again…

Have you ever been to a white elephant party? What was your favorite part? Share it here or send me an email.

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