White Elephant Gift Swap Disappointments and Ideas

Description: Ideas for improving your next White Elephant gift swap party

Categories: Entertainment: Misc.
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Submitted by: Nannette | View Member Profile | View Other Posts
Created: 12/21/2003

You've heard of the White Elephant Gift swaps that are typical around Christmas. Everyone brings something from home they want to get rid of, or purchases something inexpensive. Typically, many people, especially children, go home hurt and disappointed.

We did a variation this year, but asked people to bring a Christmas themed item they purchased between $2 and $5. Some were very nice, and others were still a major disappointment. So this is an idea of what I'm going to do in the future:

As hostess, purchase several nice gifts that you would want for your own family and kids. Keep them in 2 separate piles away from the main choosing pile: adult and child piles. If someone chooses what you, as hostmaster, think is a bogus gift, then let them choose from the special pile, especially children. The gift they originally received is put back in the real pile, opened, and others can choose it if they want. Also, if someone gets a bogus gift, they may optionally choose from the alternate pile or from one of these opened gifts (a child may have relinquished a nice adult gift).

But only have the special pile for bogus gift getters, and then if everyone does bring good presents, then you get to keep the good gifts for your own family. Unfortunately, you have to have money and time to do that too. And do you offend someone by telling them their gift is bogus?

I think most of the kids were disappointed last night at another party I went to that did the White Elephant theme, with household items. We were told in advance to bring something you'd sell at a garage sale, and no gag gifts. Yet there were several disappointing items. A rack you hang in a shower, an old egg crate box, a Tax for Dummies book, other books. Popular items were of course toys and knick-knacks, towels, etc. Maybe in advance indicate "books" aren't allowed. Even if you bring what you think is a nice book, it might not be suitable or appealing to the recipient. And tell them in advance, don't bring junk!

It is sad to see the children, because they see a pile of presents and automatically think they're going to get something really great. I always try to warn our kids not to expect much from these parties.

As I said, our church had one of these White Elephant swaps last night, and I wish I had known about this Christmas party sooner and thought about that. We took 4 garbage sacks and 2 boxes of very nice out-grown toys to the Better Living Center a week ago, and I could have wrapped up several nice things from there to bring as "alternate" presents. So when you are invited to one of these gigs, you might consider warning the hostess and offering to bring some nice alternate presents.

If you are hostess, you could even invite some people to bring gifts for the alternate pile -- those who have several nice options to bring and wouldn't mind parting with them. But again, you'd want to make sure you knew even those items were really good and not bogus yet again. I guess you could invite folks to give them to you in advance and you'll wrap them and approve them for the "altnernate" piles.

Anyway, if I ever do it again, I'm going to make this change and hope I don't offend someone by saying their gift isn't good enough. But on the other hand, how can they NOT know their gift is a disappointment when they see the other nice gifts. And it is anonymous more or less anyway, so it's not like you're pointing out to everyone, "So and so brought a bogus gift."

Our hostess last night brought several alternate gifts and kept them in the main pile. So if a kid chose a bogus gift, then they had to try again and may get yet another bogus gift. So the alternate gifts need to be kept in a separate pile and only selected from if the person does end up with something bad. I don't agree with the concept of allowing gag gifts. There are just too many of them.... old tennis shoes, roll of toilet paper, etc. type disappointing items when others are walking away with something really nice and you went to a lot of effort and brought really nice gifts yourself.

Meanwhile, I am also never going to use the "steal" rule again. In the typical game, when it is your turn, you are allowed to steal an item from someone else, or pick something from the pile. If you steal their item, they then pick something from the pile. Rules vary whether the second person gets to steal or not. Meanwhile, it is typical that you can only steal an item up to 3 times, and then it is frozen. At one party, the 3 times included the first person, at the second party, the 3 times didn't, so it was passed to 4 people before being frozen.

In fact, one young girl was the third to get a very nice, huge red kickball. She thought it was frozen, but a 19 year old boy took it away and then it was frozen. She was in tears all night long and ended up with something she could never use. But then again, she had "stolen" it from another child in the first place, who also ended up with a worse gift, so....

But, I am going to do it this way in the future:

When it is your turn, if you want, you can ASK up to 3 people if they want to let you have their gift. If they all say "No" you have to pick one from the pile. If they want to give up their gift, then you can have it and they can pick one from the pile, but they can't steal or ask for a swap. I decided after yesterday that it is just too disappointing for kids to have their gift stolen from them, and it just isn't a Christian thing to do anyway. And if someone allows you to have their gift, then it is their gamble that they might get something worse.

When it was my turn, I ended up stealing my child's gift, so that she could have another chance to get something nice. She got something nice for an adult, but not for a child.

I think child gifts and adult gifts should be kept in different piles, but again, we did that at our party and people put adult stuff in the kids pile. I guess they were confused or didn't understand what a child gift was.

Anyway, just thinking out loud on ideas that you may want to think about before hosting your own White Elephant Gift Swap party.