This year I’ve been to three of them and I’ve been invited to two others. I refer, of course, to the “white elephant” Christmas party, an activity that was once rare but is now becoming as ubiquitous as that nagging recording of Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. The white elephant party—when done properly—is a bonanza of bad gifts, a panoply of cheesy merchandise “as-seen-on-TV” or found in the garage. I love a good white elephant because I’m a big fan of the odd and the inexplicable. Years ago, I acquired a parmesan cheese shaker which is shaped like the leaning Tower of Pisa. I have a deck of cards featuring mugshots of famous people. Just this week I became the proud owner of a red trucker cap with real deer antlers hot-glued onto it.
I know some people fret about what to take to a white elephant party. They don’t realize the beauty of the pale pachyderm: picking out a tasteless item for a random person is much easier than deciding on a desirable gift for any actual person on your gift list. I don’t know what to get my mother this year, but I’ve had no problem coming up with multiple ideas for white elephants—gifts that NObody would ever buy for themselves.
Giving people stuff they don’t want and can’t use is as close as I’m likely to get to doing government work. If God had asked my advice two thousand years ago, I would probably have recommended that He send an angel to follow each person, 24 hours a day…with a taser. You commit a sin — ZAP! Instead, He made sure the first Christmas gift was perfect…perfect in every way.
Elephants are supposed to have excellent memories. God, on the other hand, tends to forget. He forgets my sins, my past indiscretions, my failures. Forgetting the past? What a present!
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