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BradlyL t1_j0xpem5 wrote

What’s inside?

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Catlover_999 t1_j0xpf10 wrote

this is torture for the gift receiver to open if they really need to tale a whizz

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WeHaveAlwaysExisted t1_j0y31xm wrote

Now we know what Santa's commode at the North Pole really looks like.

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dough_fresh t1_j0y8wt1 wrote

Yeeees! For a white elephant gift I wrapped just a plunger stuffed it with Hershey kisses and tied little bows around the handle

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Kazureigh_Black t1_j0y9jbw wrote

I wanna know where "white elephant" replaced "dirty santa" as the name of this activity. This is the first year I've heard of this new term and the old one makes a lot more sense ... sort of.

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Angreek t1_j0ye2d4 wrote

White elephant gifts?

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Murany t1_j0ygexa wrote

oh I know! It's a book! ... books!

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Accomplished-Lab1046 t1_j0ykcov wrote

This reminds me of that "The Office" episode where Dwight got pranked

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DoofusMagnus t1_j0yt8yt wrote

Secret Santa is when everyone pulls the name of another participant and buys that specific person a gift. Usually you try to get them something they genuinely want.

White Elephant/Yankee Swap is when everyone brings a gift without a specific recipient in mind, everyone pulls a number, and you pick a gift in that order and can choose to either keep it or force a previous opener to swap with you. A higher number is better because you have more to choose from, except for #1 who gets their pick of anything at the end. The gifts often tend to be on the silly side.

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chrissesky13 t1_j0z15i7 wrote

Idk what they're talking about the gifts needing to be bad. My friend group and now my work group are doing a white elephant. We had a $50 limit in our friend group. There were nice bottles of whiskey/scotch, a really cool back massager that works at home or in your car, a karaoke speaker and microphone, a giant button activated wearable Optimus Prime helmet, lotions and body wash stuff from bed bath and beyond, a Switch game. Sure some of them are silly but they're not bad gifts. The massager is legit!! We all laughed at the helmet and then took turns trying it on.

The last family Christmas I attended at my husband's we played white elephant and those fucks had tablets in the mix. They were like Amazon fire tablets but still new and free to whoever stole em.

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Crafted_20 t1_j0z1tyo wrote

What is a white elephant gift

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Igor_J t1_j0z3tt5 wrote

My office does a white elephant swap and the gifts are typically decent and/or funny. Many of the gifts got "stolen".

The alternative was Secret Santa which imo is terrible because do you really know your coworkers and their interests? What if you draw the bosses name?

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APRForReddit t1_j0z3tzt wrote

That’s cool. But it’s not a white elephant.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange

“A white elephant gift exchange,[1] Yankee swap[2] or Dirty Santa[3][nb 1] is a party game where amusing and impractical gifts are exchanged during festivities. The goal of a white elephant gift exchange is to entertain party-goers rather than to gain a genuinely valuable or highly sought-after item.”

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LeftClique OP t1_j0z6u8t wrote

Inside the toilet was a cute cat coffee cup and a box of hot chocolate mix & inside the plunger was a fun wine/bottle opener that looked like a bat (the wings opened during use of the corkscrew) with some lottery scratch offs! In hindsight, it would have been cool if the inside would have aligned with the shape - there’s always next year!

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LeftClique OP t1_j0z7okp wrote

In this variety of ‘white elephant’ or ‘dirty santa’ you bring a silly gift wrapped - anything from a tortilla blanket to a canvas of handsome Squidward. The presents are put in the middle and an order is decided via names drawn from a hat, etc. The first person picks a gift, opens it and displays to everyone. The second person can either steal the first person’s gift or pick a gift from the pile and so on! Usually there are a limited number of steals and each group might have their own rules. All in all, it’s just fun to do with friends/family!

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dovahkiitten16 t1_j0zadb9 wrote

If you scroll down to the rules part you’ll see where the idea is that gifts can be swapped around and/or stolen. I would argue that the game part of it is what sets White Elephant apart from a traditional gift exchange or Secret Santa more than the quality of the gifts. So is there a word for it when you do that part of the game but make the gifts decent?

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dovahkiitten16 t1_j0zay43 wrote

My (extended) family does a White Elephant because it’s far cheaper than having to buy gifts for everyone and is much less pressure than a Secret Santa. It’s always a fun game, but yeah, effort is made to make the gifts decent. I got a bookshelf this year and stuck my cousin with a box of chocolate covered peanuts in exchange.

I’ve never heard of gifts having to be bad or that being the qualifier for making it a White Elephant. I thought it was more about the game aspect to gift giving.

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APRForReddit t1_j0zcrog wrote

It’s called a gift exchange….

White elephant refers to the story of the Thai king giving people he didn’t like white elephants. They weren’t allowed to decline or get rid of the gift, and taking care of an elephant would bankrupt them.

That’s why it’s called white elephant. It’s about shitty gifts

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IndigoRose2022 t1_j0zj00j wrote

Nice!

I just put mine in a bag, I’m too lazy 😂

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Chance_Bike9292 t1_j0zpcrv wrote

Is this a skill you've always had or have you learned recently?

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SamsRhubarbe t1_j0zqcgx wrote

Theirs two type of people

  • Those who do this
  • Those who struggle to wrap a square box
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LeftClique OP t1_j0zqlta wrote

Funny enough, I actually went to a design college and during our first year we had a cardboard project where we had to make thing out of recycled cardboard - so I like to think those skills came in clutch!

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Nemesis_Ghost t1_j105fkc wrote

IDK, I feel as though they probably just know how to knock things off of tables/shelves, torture small rodents, how to properly use litter(ie get it all over the place), and show people their butt hole. Not sure any of that is actually useful for productive humans.

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DoofusMagnus t1_j106fid wrote

Things can evolve beyond the origin of their names.

In the part you quoted you even demonstrate that the activity has names other than White Elephant. By your logic, can Yankee Swaps only be done by people in the northern US?

"Gift exchange" could describe any number of things, from a standard everyone-buys-soemthing-for-everyone-else, to Secret Santa, to White Elephant/Yankee Swap. Have you seen "gift exchange" used anywhere to specifically refer to a game of White Elephant done with non-shitty gifts?

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EvilDutchrebel t1_j10c69i wrote

In the Netherlands we call this a Surprise. My fellow dutchies understand!

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Askin_MrBrooks t1_j115npm wrote

Oh, white elephant is just a weird name for Dirty Santa.

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joebraa t1_j11jbvt wrote

Im sorry...

But what do they mean with white elephant gifts?

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8gulmohar t1_j11kguw wrote

Why would anyone unwrap this?

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AoesDDR t1_j11rdbl wrote

I think I know what this is

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