Gift Swap

Some folks maintain that there's nothing that sums up the frenzy of the Christmas Season like a good rousing gift swap at the Christmas party. I've never experienced the ruthless intensity of the steal-em'-as-many-times-as-you-can gift swap as has been generated here in Arizona. For the past two weeks, I've attended four such parties, and let me tell you, Arizonans have really honed their skill when it comes to these types of gift exchanges.

Now the invitations read: "Bring a White Elephant gift for the gift exchange". Sometimes they may add more details to it such as one that asked that nothing over $10 be brought or the "All Christmas ornaments" exchange held by one lady friend. But the other two... (they were the more 'down and dirty' of the exchanges) just said "a White Elephant". Now what springs to mind when somebody says a "White Elephant" is as different as you and me, I'm sure. What sprang to my mind was a replica of an Easter Island sun god molded into a Kleenex box that Bill's dad gave us one year after our trip to New Guinea. Yeah, it looked like a primitive warrior, all right, but the tissue had to be pulled out of his nose and somehow we just could never bring ourselves to put the darned thing out. So when I heard "White Elephant" that's the sort of thing I imagined.

And the Rules go something like this: When your name is called or your number is called, (depending on what style is used) the first person goes to the table and selects a wrapped gift. He opens it and shows it to the others of the group. The second person who is called can either steal the first guy's present or select another one off the table. If he steals the first guy's present, the first guy gets to take another present and open it. The 'deal' here is that you hope for a high number and not to be the first person. At the first gift exchange, the poor gal who chose the first present got hers stolen so many times that she must have gotten up twenty times during the course of the party. Of course, that meant, she had desirable presents. If you happen to open a 'dud' (happened to me at both parties) nobody bothers to steal your present and at the end of the evening, gee, it's yours to take home! One item can only be stolen one time in a round. Otherwise, it would make the party pretty much interminable.

At the first party, we got a Look-See at what makes a desirable present. It ran pretty much like this: Number One was liquor. Number Two was wine. Number Three was Lotto tickets. And Number Four were gift cards. The rest of the so-called white elephants were pretty much not being stolen back and forth. The hits were a bottle of Crown Royal and another with a bottle of Jose Cuervo and a pair of men's bikini underpants. If they got stolen once, they got stolen thirty times or so.

One of the gals who had stolen the Crown Royal and had it stolen back from her, was finally hanging onto a gift card from Borders. There was another one circulating from Chili's. A laconic cowboy just had his bottle of tequila stolen from him. Since the Crown Royal had already been stolen, it was 'out' of range on this round. The crowd urged him to steal one of the wine gifts.

He grimaced. "I can't drink that stuff! I gotta drink the real stuff."

"Well, steal the gift card for Mexican food!" one of his buddies urged him.

The cowboy nodded and clicked his heels. "Will do!" He took three strides over to the lady with the Borders card and plucked it out of her hand.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked. "That's a card for Borders!"

"It sure is!" he agreed, with a wide grin. "And I just love to eat Mexican!"

"Mexican food! You fool!" she cried, "It's for a book store. They don't serve Mexican food!"

In disbelief, the tipsy cowboy stared at the little card he clutched. "But I like to eat Mexican food. I don't read no books!" The crowd roared with laughter at the crestfallen look on his face.

At the second party, the gifts were even more eclectic: an orange strait jacket with "PSYCH WARD" emblazoned on the back proved to be a big winner; a large pair of fuzzy slippers with Homer Simpson's plastic face plastered on them; more Crown Royal and two kinds of tequila (but no men's underwear this time); a lit up snowman with "I BELIEVE" emblazoned on his tummy; and an oversize margarita glass with "PIMP" in four inch letters. Yes, the prizes were definitely getting more inventive as the Christmas season progressed. The worst prize was the first one selected and nobody stole it back, a wine gift bag stuffed with a can of Spagetti-O's and two Twix fun-size bars.

The joy of these parties is listening to the banter and repartee exchanged and it's impossible not to see the personalities and quirks emerge of these folks we are partying with. Since we're the relative newcomers, I'm having a ball taking it all in. Maybe the same zaniness will wane after watching these characters for twenty years or so. But for this year, it's all fresh and new and man... it gives me something to blog about, doesn't it?

Merry Christmas! And may your gifts be worth hanging onto.