White Elephant!

I love Christmas for many reasons: Christ's birth, the nativity, peppermint tuxedo mochas (white chocolate + hot cocoa + espresso + peppermint), making paper snowflakes, How the Grinch stole Christmas, christmas sweaters, christmas lights and A Very Rosie Thomas Christmas (fantastic Christmas album if you're looking for one to offset all the Nat King Cole that's playing on the radio). Christmas is also a season of a bajillion Christmas parties that we get invited to. And Christmas parties means gift exchanges. And the best kind of gift exchanging is white elephant, which is really more like a game than it is about getting presents.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with a white elephant gift exchange, it is simply this: a hilarious event, where people bring random/outlandish gifts instead of store bought, serious gifts under $10 (i.e socks, scarves, picture frames, etc). Apparently this tradition finds its origin from Asian countries-- more specifically Thailand and Burma-- that culturally regarded white elephants as holy beings, believed to bring fertility, prosperity and power. The people believed that, due to the nature of these creatures (and since the death of a white elephant would spell disaster), they needed to pampered and served with special foods, given elaborate housings, etc. However, due to large amounts of resources needed, only Kings were able to afford the "basic" upkeep. Anyway, to make a long story short, the origin of elephant gifts came from kings, when very displeased with an assistant, would give this un-lucky assistant the elephant as a "gift" of honor. And at first, the gift does seem like an honor, however, as the assistant tries to bear the financial (and probably emotional) burden of taking care of such a holy being, the novelty of the gift wears off. Elephant gifts were the cause of financial crippling for many of these unfortunate assistants. This I find ironic since these elephants were supposed to bring prosperity and power. Hmmm. Tsk. Tsk. Well anyway, a white elephant, therefore, has become a symbol of a prized possession, whose maintenance cost, exceeds it's worth.

I was first introduced to this phenomenon in highschool. And I don't mean to brag, but, I'm kind of like, really good at it. Really good at picking out elephant gifts, I mean. I attribute this ability to my quirky personality and having a natural propensity to be random and unintelligible. For example (s), one year I drew a life size portrait of myself (yes, it was 5 feet 4 inches long) and gave that away to a very lucky individual: my friend Stephanie. Another year, I found a chandelier in my garage and after asking my parent's for permission, I put said chandelier in a very large box and Kirk Obermann walked away with that beauty (talk about a prized possession exceeding it's worth.) I think it was the year after that, that I gave a $10 gift card from Baby's R Us, complete with a "congratulations on your new baby!" card. Then there was the statue of a fisherman. It was a very nice statue: picturesque and nostalgic, a lunch box in his right hand, a fishing pole in the left. The best part about him though was that he had a duck head...for a head. Oh and the list goes on and on: a framed poster of Oscar De La Hoya (the boxer), my phone number (haha, a little presumptous, I know), and a pink, heart-shaped dog-tag I had made at wal-mart that said "I've been to 2nd base and back,"--BASE was the name of the floor that I lived on for two years at Biola...it also happened to be on the 2nd floor of the dorm. Hence, the name "2nd Base," and all the immature jr. high jokes that came along with that. JP Robles was the one who walked away with that necklace/dog-tag. I still see him around campus, wearing that necklace, proudly.

Tonight, we're doing a white elephant at the Level 1 Nursing party at Jessika McKay's house. I get to go shopping today for that. How exciting! I am ready. Ready for what the Thrift store has in "store" for me. I am ready. Here I go.