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HOLLENBECK: Dirty Santa |
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Wednesday, 19 December 2007 |
 An invitation to a Christmas party triggered some amusing holiday memories. This came about through the upcoming party’s planned events, which include a game of Dirty Santa.
In case there’s someone out there who doesn’t know what that game is, I’ll enlighten you. This is the game where everyone brings a present that’s not designated for any particular person. The gifts are numbered and each person draws a number, setting up the order the person gets to pick out one of the presents.
Dirty Santa is also known by several other names — White Elephant Gift Exchange, Yankee Swap, Scottish Gift Exchange, Thieving Secret Santa, Chinese Exchange, Thieving Elves, The Game, Yankee Exchange, The Present Game, Stealing Santa, Chinese Christmas, Rob Your Neighbor, Dirty Christmas, Cajun Christmas, Backward Auction, Chinese Auction, California Swap, Steal-a-Thon, Cutthroat Christmas, Redneck Santa, Rob a Santa, Scotch Auction and The Grinch Game, and some others I probably don’t want to list here.
The popular party game usually is played during the Christmas season. The premise of the game is that each guest contributes one gift and ultimately each guest walks away with a different gift.
The type of gift is sometimes decided ahead of time — e.g., “something less than $10,” “a used item from home,” “a gag gift,” etc.
All participants put their gifts into “the pile.” Gifts are wrapped, but are not labeled to reflect a sender or recipient. All participants draw a number (sometimes from a hat) to determine their order.
The participant with #1 unwraps any gift from the assortment and then shows it to everyone. Each successive participant, in the order determined from the drawing, can either 1) “steal” an already opened gift (if there’s one he/she really likes) or 2) be adventuresome and go for a wrapped gift from the pile. If the participant chooses to steal, the person whose gift is stolen now repeats the turn and either steals another person’s gift or takes a new gift.
This cycle of stealing can sometimes continue for a long time, until a new gift is chosen, at which point the turn is passed to the participant with the next number from the drawing. An alternative to the drawing is to sit in a circle and take turns in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Since items can be stolen, the item in your possession is not yours until the game is over (thus meaning that a food item cannot be entirely eaten until the game is over).
As an optional but recommended rule, a gift is considered “dead” (cannot be stolen again) after it has been stolen three times.
In a variant, the gift is wrapped inside-out, so that the printed part of the wrapping paper isn't’ visible to the recipient. The back of the wrapping paper is typically white, and this could be considered the etymology of the term “white elephant.” It is more likely, though, that the name is an acknowledgment that many of these gifts, once unwrapped, are unappealing to the recipient and as such considered white elephants since the gift’s cost exceeds its utility.
For the most part, white elephant gifts are gag gifts that are intended to be funny. Some groups tend to go for risque choices, but this has always made me uncomfortable. Funny is funny; raunchy can go too far in a hurry.
In another variant, called a Yankee Swap, the person who picked first also has the option of picking last or keeping the gift already in hand.
In talking about the game, someone recalled having played it when one gift turned out to be a fruitcake that had been received by that person the year before. But then there are many who believe there’s really only one fruitcake in the world and it’s been traveling the world for centuries ...
The now defunct MacDowell Music Club included some memorable Dirty Santa moments — only we never called it this. In our group, we brought two gifts — one nice one and one gag gift. For years, a worn-out, practically-in-pieces candle was traditionally included. Whoever ended up with the candle one year would be sure to bring it back as her gag gift the next year and no one ever remembered who had it last. It made for lots of funny moments.
Finally, the old candle disappeared — I don’t remember why — and I started a new trend. My spouse found a nude woman candle statue in a local thrift shop when I was looking for my club present. When he showed it to me, I was thrilled. “This is my music club gift for the year!” I told him, more than a little excited.
For several years it circulated, then it, too, went by the way of someone who apparently didn’t come to the party the following year. I have no idea where its final home was.
Jean Adams holds the club record for bringing the most creative, hilarious gift. We were flabbergasted when a club member opened Jean’s gift and discovered that Jean (innocently unidentified at that juncture) had simply emptied the contents of the vegetable crisper in her refrigerator. She had tossed in withered carrots, brown lettuce, pithy radishes, what once had been red cabbage but had by this time turned to a strange shade of blue and some other things that weren’t even recognizable. It was a sight no one expected and one we talked about till the club folded a few years ago.
Another memorable gift was the funeral wreath I brought one year. It had been a door prize my spouse won at a meeting. Not only did it light up the whole room (with batteries or via an electrical outlet, so you never had to be deprived of its beauty), it also was scented. Make that STRONGLY scented, as in send you to your knees if you didn’t hold your breath.
The smell of roses was absolutely overpowering. This aroma didn’t conjure up thoughts of an English country garden. It was more akin to the boudoir of one of the “girls” working in a Wild West saloon.
I had seen my husband’s face when he received the prize and that in itself was unforgettable. No. 1, he hates artificial flowers, which to him are any kind other than the ones you pick out of the yard or buy at a florist’s shop. No. 2, these weren’t even silk, but were hard, cheap plastic in a shade of pink best described as Pepto Bismol. No. 3, Ed is absolutely transparent. Whatever emotion he’s feeling will be obvious to anyone and it certainly was this time.
The wreath wasn’t something you wanted to rip apart to turn into an arrangement for the coffee table. Barbara Campbell, the “lucky” person who took it home with her, put it out with her trash for her garbage collector the very next morning.
“Why didn’t you save it for next year’s gift?” I asked her. “That was a real treasure.”
“Twenty-four hours was as long as I could stand that kind of treasure,” Barbara said. “My garbage man was more than welcome to it, and I doubt if he wanted it for long. I’m sure he got it to the Saline County landfill as quickly as he could get there. He probably made a special trip.”
I don’t know what I’ll be bringing as my offering for the upcoming Dirty Santa game. It’s a shame the nude woman statue and the wreath are no longer available, but I could ride on Jean Adams’ success and check out my vegetable crisper ... . It’s a thought.
Lynda Hollenbeck is associate editor of the Courier. She receives e-mail at
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