When Secret Santa and White Elephants Get Mixed Up!

An office Christmas Party Story.

This is what happens, a group of staff members don’t really remember how to play a white elephant game at the company Christmas party. I was on a staff of only 13 and our boss took us out to a nice restaurant for our staff Christmas party. The emails about a gift exchange went around, and everyone decided that a white elephant gift exchange would be funny. However, as we all started talking about what to get, it became clear that instead of giving lame gifts, we were going in a different direction. We talked about the rules and how it was supposed to work. Like many childhood games, everyone had a different idea about it and had played it different in the past. The problem started when we never really established the rules of the thing. We just all sort of bought gifts in preparation for the party and wrapped them up and brought them to the party.

Based on what I heard, I figured out that we weren’t doing lame gifts, so I went to Target to see what I could do. I ended up getting a poker set. I knew at least a couple of people would enjoy a poker set, and to go with it, I got an expensive set of playing cards as a supplement. I wrapped it all up and got ready for the party.

The day of the party arrived, and we all went to Palisades on the Seattle waterfront. It’s a wonderful restaurant that served American and authentic Japanese sushi and sported a koi pond, over which you had to walk to reach the tables. It doesn’t really snow much here in the Emerald City, but there was a bite of winter in the air. The sun sits low in the sky in December and the days are short, especially around Christmas.

We had all sort of bought different gifts that we knew other people on staff would like. The clever part came in where because it was white elephant, all the gifts were open to be traded by someone else. There was no way the right person was going to end up with the right gift. The genius part was that everyone wanted certain gifts, as the stakes were high.

We did follow the standard rules of “you can open your gift and get it stolen or trade for another.” Once gifts started getting unwrapped, you could take from the pile or do a steal. This spread the gifts around. As I said, it was a high-stakes scenario because these gifts were all things various people actually wanted. No lame glass, candles or dumb gifts at this party. It probably would have been better to do an actual Secret Santa and get people what they wanted, but instead we ended up with this weird hybrid of secretly buying stuff for each other and then seeing if we actually got what we wanted. I will say, it ended being a lot of fun. It was fun to watch people try to get ahold of the thing they actually wanted. White Elephant is fun because everyone is trying to avoid the most useless gift, and this was the reverse. Everyone was angling after a gift that was basically bought for them, but that they had to strategically figure out how to get.

I ended up with some little toys which were perfect for the office. I got an elephant that, when squeezed, popped out a little ball. The best part is that my boss was the one who brought it, and I liked to shoot it over her head when she went to file. I think she regretted buying that toy after that. I kept it in my desk and every once in a while I’d just shoot balls all over the office. What can I say? I was bored, underpaid, and in my late 20s with a boss who regretted hiring me.

If you want to spice up your office gift giving, then give this modified form of the game a try. We invented accidentally, and I’m here to pass it on to you as my free gift.