The Whitest Elephant

The office party white elephant exchange is not my idea of a good time. Too unpredictable, please don’t mess with my emotions.

Against my intuition, I agreed to find an item for $10 or less and participate. Ten scratchers might do, low dollar stakes to maximize the scratching. Then I wandered the local grocer’s Seasonal aisle and spotted something better. Ten-pound bags of Kingsford Match Light ® were selling for $9.99.

I did seek input on handing out coal to a colleague. Some gave the emperor’s thumbs up, others a hard thumbs down. With hesitation, I boxed up the chalky black stuff then wrapped it in pretty paper, as if I might mitigate this heartless act.

My doubts persisted and the morning of the exchange I considered bailing. But how feckless I would feel finding these lumps in the new year, knowing I’d bought them and wrapped them and opened them myself on a wild carousel of futility. I have a gas grill and no use for Matchlight. I deposited the package early to evade connection to this heinous act and went to hide at my desk.

When the party started I drew a five, a good number, I was told. With 40 participants, I’d have one of the last shots at swapping something lousy if it landed in my hands. I picked a parcel with care and opened it to find a handsome cutting board crafted of wood felled in a New Hampshire forest. I aimed to keep the item and held it close to my chest.

Then my heart fell. The woman who’d fetched my package with equal hopes for something beautiful had found coal beneath all that pretty paper. I felt wicked.

Soon enough, my wickedness earned a change in fortunes as the organizer turned the count on its head, starting from one. When five came along, I held fast to my coveted object and kept my eyes on the coal.

Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

At thirty-five the kind-looking woman with the coal in her lap scanned the room for an exchange, her eyes locking on my prize possession. She rose and marched right toward me, setting that bag of Kingsford right back where it came from. I felt shock, then grief, then gratitude. I was the one person in the room who most deserved this outcome. The exchange wound down through the last five, and nobody sought my coal.

All exchanging done, the organizer stood on a sofa and said, ‘Friends, we have prizes for the best and the worst of the white elephants.’ The truth is, I don’t really know what best and worst mean in the context of a white elephant gift, an object you didn’t have, didn’t want, and didn’t need that appears in your hands and may be taken away at the whim of a colleague and replaced with another object you and she didn’t have or want or need. All of it selected without either of you in mind.

The charcoal, it turned out, was either ‘best’ or ‘worst’ in this stream of ambiguity, filling me with neither pride nor shame. I just felt happy, even bearing a ten-pound bag of Kingsford, part of a cosmic joke and universal cheer shared by an office where camaraderie runs strong.

The prize, the coup de grâce, was equally ambiguous. The organizer had selected the perfect riposte for the circumstances. Yes, the label called it Jack Daniels. But yes, the label also said Apple Spice Punch, a 15 proof elixir best served warm, if at all, to cure the common cough.

I’ve come around (and around and around) on my once-dim view of the office holiday white elephant exchange. Sometimes you just have to go with it.

##