I have very few pieces of profound wisdom that I can offer
the world that did not come from someone else, from common sense, or from
listening to the “Sunscreen Song” about 800 times during the ‘90s.
But I do have this:
Make it your goal to
go home from the annual “Dirty Santa/Yankee Swap” game with the worst possible
gift.
I know, I know. Where did you read that first: The Bible or
Shakespeare? Seriously, though, this is a philosophy that struck me more than a
decade ago, and I have sought to implement ever since. Whether it has done me any good is, of
course, debatable, but since I have very few epiphanies I can say with confidence
are completely organic to my own experience, I’ve decided to take this one and run
with it.
A dozen years ago or so, when I was at a work Christmas party
where a gift-stealing game was one of the centerpieces of the annual event. (I should add that, despite my best efforts, I
tend to be the bearer of less-popular and less-frequently stolen gift. I realize
that bringing alcohol to the exchange would be the easiest remedy to this poor
track record, but since I don’t drink – I say and do enough stupid stuff
without help – I tend not to want to go that route.) This year, however, I had found a kitchen
gadget that was normally twice as much as the spending limit, marked down to
50% off.
I was delighted when one of our young interns selected the
gift and her face immediately lit up when she saw it was something practical
and legitimately useful for her as she was just beginning to equip her grown-up
apartment. The gift was quickly stolen by another intern who had a similar
reaction. But then it was nabbed by a
much older and more well-established co-worker, and then an executive, until it
was finally retired. I remember feeling
a little annoyed that people who could have easily forked over the cash for the
kitchen gadget at full price were fighting over it (good-naturedly, of course)
while an intern for whom that item would actually have been a really nice item,
was left with something like a shower radio in the end. (Which is kind of cool, admittedly.)
It got me thinking.
That was the same year when one junior employee brought his out-of-town
girlfriend, and she selected one of the inevitable gag gifts in the bunch: a
hideous Christmas ornament of some local celebrity that made the
nightmarishLucille Ball sculpture look downright complimentary.
I remember how quietly she sat, smiling and
watching the rest of the festivities for the course of the game, but obviously
knowing there was no way she was going to be pulled into any of the socializing-through-gift-swapping
the rest of us were happily engaged in – myself included.
As I watched her, I couldn’t help but think that all of our
bids to get the best gift really missed the point of the whole game, which was
draw people in and create a fun banter between people and their partners. The
hope was that we would leave the party knowing each other a little better – a kind
of holiday team-building exercise. But it didn’t really work that way.
I emerged with a set of beautiful goblets in a hard-fought
victory against a woman in accounting, but I couldn’t shake the disappointment
on the young woman’s face – not disappointment about her gift, but
disappointment that she was not going to be able to participate in the engagement
that everyone else was enjoying. At the
end of the party, I approached her and asked if we could trade gifts. I knew it
was too late, but that hideous ornament now leers at me from our tree every
year as a reminder of what I decided that night: My goal, from that point forward, would be to
leave every gift exchange with the worst possible gift.
I’ve tried it since then, with other companies I’ve gone on
to work for, with small groups from church, with book clubs, with holiday block
parties – and it’s hard to describe the degree of satisfaction it to know that
you are there with the subversive goal of coming out on bottom.
I want to make it clear that I am IN NO WAY suggesting that
games like Dirty Santa/Yankee Swap are harmful and should be banned from
holiday parties for any other kind of overly-sensitive nonsense – they are fun
and spirited and always, always hilarious. But if we are committed to the idea that Christmas
or Hanukkah are actually about commemorating sacred events in our faiths’
histories, why not practice that across the board?
Nothing in those exchanges is ever anything I couldn’t buy
for myself, if I actually wanted it, and I suspect the same is true for you,
too. The much bigger reward is finding a
way to pull people in and to give people who are just starting out a better
return on their $20 gift-limit buy-in than maybe I get.
Of course, there is no good way to share something like this
without sounding like you are holding yourself up as a model of virtue and best
choices, but those of you who know me know that when I am trying to be
intentionally self-congratulatory, I go WAY bigger than this. And I realize
that I’m a total wet blanket by trying to bring some kind of moral lesson into
one of the most lighthearted and silliest traditions around the holidays. But,
you know, you asked for my best season advice so…
Oh, wait. You didn’t
ask. Well, in that case, I probably am just sharing this to feel better about
myself. (But seriously, try the worst-gift-in-the-exchange
thing this year…and if you find yourself in a gift exchange with me and I go
home with your gift, please don’t take it personally.)
