Monday, December 29, 2008

White Elephant

We had one of our extended family Christmas parties yesterday. Each year we have a grab bag for the adult men and one for the adult women. This year my aunt suggested we shake things up a bit and do a White Elephant.

At first I thought it was a good idea because every year I would dread trying to find grab bag gifts to buy. Quite often, these would be the last gifts I would purchase because I could just never figure out what to get that would be pleasing to a wide variety of women or men. The women usually ended up exchanging Christmas decorations while the men usually ended up exchanging small tools.

Once I realized that I had to find something in my house for this White Elephant, I realized it wasn't going to be that easy. After a year of whittling down our "stuff" the only things left in my house were things we use. My mom and dad came to my rescue. They found stuff for us in their basement!

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I had the privilege of "winning" what has to be the epitome of a White Elephant gift: big, ugly and not very practical.

My first thought when I saw it was that it could be used for a really big soap dispenser. I mean, we have seven children, we go through a lot of soap around here! My next thought was: who in the world has enough counter space for something this big (it's about 15" high and 13" at its widest part)? But the thought that finally won out was: this thing is really ugly!

Unfortunately they made a rule that you can't bring back these gifts for next year's White Elephant. If anyone else out there participates in a White Elephant and needs a "good" gift, let me know and I would be happy to send this to you!

God Bless!

1 comment:

  1. One year my sister received a truly White Elephant gift from one of her students. She brought it to the family Christmas one year. Since then we have a drawing and someone in our family gets to take it home with them for the year. I think ours beats yours, Laura. I don't have it this year so I can't send you a photo. But yours is really something! When I look at it, it makes me think of summer and the beach and that's always good!

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