From now through December 10, 2008, we want to hear from you what’s the most incredible/ridiculous white elephant gift you’ve ever received! The entry with the most incredible/ridiculous gift will receive their choice of either a free admission to the National Youth Ministry Conference, or a free one-year subscription to Simply All Access. Remember, leave us your name and email so we can get back to you if you win!
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Justin Boling is the Marketing Coordinator for Simply Youth Ministry. [
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I got a Home Enema Kit at a student ministry Christmas party.
i think sean wins.
that’s worse than my new kids on the block christmas tape. who even owns a tape player anymore?
a singing toilet that has a motion senor in it so it says/sings rude things when you walk by.
I’m not sure if this qualifies because the gift I received was at a gift exchange that was supposed to be for real gifts, not white elephant gifts. Well, one person thought otherwise…
Everyone brought gifts that had a value of $30-$35 to a staff Christmas party, I brought a sweet Starbucks gift basket (beans, gift card, mugs…). The exchange came and I ended up with Christmas themed paper plates, a pack of ten plates.
At my friends annual Christmas party we all exchanged white elephant gifts and I ended up with my ADD friends gift. Sadly I knew my friend and knew it would not be good. I was right.
I received a half eaten biscuit from Cracker Barrel that had sat under my friends bed for an unspecified abmount of time and a Porsche manual he had picked up at a car dealership. The manual was to class up the gift.
Last year I was at my wife’s family party. Everyone kept saying that my wife’s grandmother (Granny) had a “special” gift for me. So I had to pick that gift. I saw the package (Victoria Secret’s box) but I didn’t think anything about the packaging because she is notorious for finding random boxes and putting presents in. Everyone kept passing gifts and kept looking at me and saying “Granny has a special gift for you.” Finally when it came my turn, I opened the box, and I got this:
http://piniglarism.com/uw%20(Large).jpg
Needless to say my face became very red. Granny’s face became quite red too because she didn’t give them. My wife’s Uncle Mike thought it would be funny to make sure they ended up with me.
I didn’t receive it, but I was at a party when someone got a gravy boat shaped like a toilet.
While in seminary, I got a porcelain mother pig with matching 4 piglets ready to “eat”. It is in two pieces… the mother laying on her side and the 4 piglets that can be pushed up next to mom to “eat”. I can send pics if you want!
classic!!
I got one of those Chest Exercise thingys with the two handles and three metal springs in between for resistance. When I opened it I was so excited to show off my arm curl abilities and put one handle under my foot and started to do a bicep curl. The handle slipped off the bottom of my shoe and sprang back up and hit me in the face. Kind of embarassing alone, but the fact that it chipped my front tooth and broke a florescent light tube won the stupid award for me that year.
I got a giant Jock strap that was big enough to fit an elephant!
I once received a hot dog, yes a real hot dog, that a student had turned into a superhero, complete with toilet paper cape and a face drawn on with a sharpie. it was hilarious!!
but here are a few other winners that i’ve given and received:
2 pennies- one student’s “two cents” (very creative)
hemmorhoid cream and cat food
someone’s old gym shoe which we used as a trophy for various things
milli vanilli and paula abdul cassette tapes
the head of a goose cookie jar
I got a toilet seat at our college Christmas party.
Just last year, I opened a gift from my mother that made everyone in the room scream. She carefully had wrapped in layers of tissue paper and placed in a drawsting bag – an 8 long petrified alligator arm. She grinned ear to ear as she explained ‘how cool’ it would be for my kids to take it to ‘show and tell’ (My kids are in 12th and 8th grade…they haven’t had ‘show and tell’ in at least 6 years) She continued in her excitement explaining that very few people could get ‘this close’ to an alligator and ‘see its bones and tissue’. Understand that the cut side of the arm was totally exposed. Where she got it? I didn’t want to ask. But I am afraid to open this years goodies as she has recently visited the same location I believe the ‘Arm’ came from.
I was at an office party about 10 years ago and got this Nutcracker gift box while playing a gift game. It came with this horrible looking nutcracker that was shaped like a toy soldier and some nuts to crack. The person that bought it was so serious about how it was the greatest gift there. My sister and brother-in-law worked for the same office and thought it was so funny that I got it. The next year, I wrapped it up and gave it to my sister on Christmas morning. Since then we have re-gifted that nutcracker throughout our immediate family. It has become a tradition now. No one wants to get it and have to keep it for a year before they can give it away again. I have it again this year and plan to do something big with it.
Thanks to this gift I know have a rule for our student white elephant gift exchanges.
“Nothing that is alive, was alive, or came from something alive.”
I got a used full diaper.
At a youth Christmas party, one of our students brought a bottle deer urine used for hunting. After the present was opened that student opened the urine and the smell engulfed the room. I will never forget that!
We had some people go to Africa on a Missions Trip and they brought back a gift for the white elephant gift exchange…so I opened a box of Elephant dung that they painted white.
A winter-survival kit was being traded around at a student white elephant party. I wanted it for my car. In the end the student who won it traded it to me for my year-old cheese and cracker kit. He said he was hungry. The only stipulation was that he wanted to keep the “emergency” water that came in the kit. It was a silver plastic bag with about 1-cup of water in it. He drank the water while eating the cheese and crackers. He also ate the 3 week old moldy pizza from the youth room fridge. (after microwaving) He did this when I wasn’t looking, of course. His mom always bought us a supply popcorn and chips for the youth room after that.
I guess next time I’ll have to serve more than cordial cherries and hot chocolate at my Christmas parties.
an actual, real life moosehead.
Last night I got a full detailed print out of “How to Build a coffin”
For the last 8 years my mom has taken me, my wife and sister shopping on the day after Christmas as her Christmas gift to us, each year I go to the Gap and try on a leather jacket, ask my wife if I should get it, she says no($350 and I don’t wear jackets enough) SOOOOO…. 2 years ago at our staff white elephant party, one of the gifts was a rubbermaid tub of clothes someone cleaned out of their house, someone picked it, someone stole it, then I got picked and stole it- inside, amongst all the sweaters from the 80′s was a genuine leather GAP jacket that fit me like a glove… the person I stole it from is bitter every day I wear it to the office. Best white elephant gift EVER.. photos upon request.
I received a lawn striper.
Am item you put on the back of a mower to make the grass lay a certain way to make designs.
Like what the use at baseball parks.
It had a two dollar price tag on it! Hey, marked down from $40!
Last night at our high school christmas party, my wife and I got a roll of toilet paper…
FINALLY, A WHITE ELEPHANT GIFT WE WILL ACTUALLY USE!!!
We did a white elephant gift exchange a couple of years ago for the worship team at our church. One guy was really struggling to figure out what to bring, but he really liked art. Being a white elephant exchange, it couldn’t be just normal art though. He bought the cheapo toilet seat from Walmart and used markers to draw on it. On the top of the lid was a little grinch-like character driving a tank and when you open the lid, it said Merry Christmas! Decorative and practical.
It was a Christmas party for our church’s young adult ministry. When it was my turn to pick, I picked up a bag that seemed heavy…which made me think that I’d gotten something good! As I removed the item from the bag, it seemed dense, yet not solid and even a little moist. I slowly began to unwrap the paper and by the time I got to the last piece i started to think that what I was unwrapping had possibly been alive not too long before. I finally revealed a recently deceased duck that my wife’s hunting/fishing cousin had shot only that morning. Needless to say the ladies in the room were coming unglued. The best part was that he showed me how to clean a bird that night. The worst was that we left it in the freezer too long until it got so frosty we couldn’t eat it
Last night we had our annual white elephant gift exchange, and one of our students received the head of a pheasant. In a previous year one student received a cow’s heart. Maybe this isn’t something I received, but like Ian, in both instances the room of 75+ went crazy. It was a beautiful sight.
One year I got a packet of expired Enema and three rolls of toilet paper from one of my youth leaders at our yearly Christmas party…
Last year I got a garlic jar with this stupid face on it. I got a Sharpie and added an “O” to the end and used this funny voice to create my new alter ego “Garlico”. Sounds ridiculous, but my nephews still talk about it today. They even took it home and put it on their stove.
Two years ago at a Staff Christmas Party someone brought a home made gift. . .
It was a huge, clear pickle jar filled with blue jello and had plastic dinosaurs floating in it. . . to look like they were swimming maybe?!
We knew she had a crazy gift under the wrapping paper when she told us her gift had to be refrigerated until we were ready to exchange! No one has ever forgotten that gift!
I once received a head made out of play dough, where my student had glued his facial hair to and called it the Nazarite after taking the nazarite vow and deciding not to shave for a month
A couple of years ago I got a bag of Peanut M&M’s that were opened. When I looked in the bag, my student had sucked all the chocolate off the peanuts and put the peanuts back in the bag!!
I got my dog back! More than 15 years ago one of the families in our church owned and operated a veterinary clinic. I had a dog that I had found and taken care of for almost a year. I knew he was sick, so this family took him in before he died of “dog cancer.” I didn’t know what they did with him until Christmas came and our student ministry did a gift exchange, they set it up so I would end up with this large box, and in it was Peanut. They had a taxidermist stuff “fix” him up for me. Cool, but very weird!!
I once got a breast pump!!.. not sure if it was used or not!!!!
A box of See’s candy. When I opened up the box, someone had already taken a bite out of each piece.
Not your traditional party for white elephant gifts but for the last 3 years of my wife’s grandmothers time on earth my brother-in-law & I played our own version of Dirty Santa.
After gifts were passed out one of us would decide if we wanted to switch before we ever opened. If we didn’t then one person opened a gift then we would discuss swapping before the other gift was opened. All of this going on so that no one knew but the two of us. Okay the bottom line. My 3 year gifts I still remember are: ladies nale polish remover & lotion (combo set), A Giant Candle in glass (like on the table at Pizza Hut) with Wise Men on the glass and had only been used once I think, and then the last year before Grandma Helen’s passing- I took home Grandpa Howard’s used swim suit (matching shirt & trunks) & 2 pair of his old Boxers.
It’s sad to say this but an enema and hand sanitizer. I can’t say anymore.
JUST HAPPENED TODAY!
Today at a gift exchange I got a $50 gift certificate to a restaurant and invited my in-laws to go out with us, my treat. We went with every intention of using the gift card to pay for dinner, as funds are always low around Christmas. When we gave the gift card to pay, the server came back and said there was NOTHING on the card, and I didn’t have a wallet so I had to ask my father in-law to cover the bill. OHHHHHHHHH Man!
For a white elephant gift I got a pink picture frame in the shape of a daisy with an up close picture of himself in it.