With Christmas round the corner, everyone’s rushing to do some "last minute Christmas shopping". I was buying some toiletries at Watson’s just now and the lady in the cashier queue behind me was loaded with tons of pre-wrapped decorative items, face towels, etc. As she dumped the entire load onto the cashier counter (knocking into me in the process), her hand reached out to grab some teddy bear candle/wax that was at the shelf just below the cashier. My immediate thought – a lot of people are going to get some very useless gifts this Christmas.
Sometimes I think whoever came up with the idea of having a gift exchange did it to save money from buying a gift for everyone. I suppose if everyone participated wholeheartedly, having a gift exchange could be fun. Unfortunately, more often than not, a gift exchange (especially office ones!) is a place where most presents given end up as unwelcomed, "white elephant" gifts.
Take Iceman for example. His kind colleagues have ensured that his cup will never runneth over. Kind of hard when you have 5 spare cups sitting in the cupboard. Thankfully, I’m not subject to any mindless gift exchanges in the office.
A couple of years ago, my church cellgroup decided to put a little twist to this whole gift exchange thing. Instead of getting a random gift for someone in the cellgroup, a "white elephant gift exchange" was introduced. The idea is to exchange an unused gift that you received with someone else in the cellgroup – with the hope that the recipient can find some function for the gift. Heh. Some funny gifts have appeared in the last 2 white elephant gift exchanges. I think my personal favourite has got to be this coughing ashtray.
Anyway, Iceman was subjected to another gift exchange this year. Instead of buying another meaningless gift, Iceman thought maybe he should write a cheque of $15 and address it to a charity. That way, he would be helping the recipient make a donation to the less fortunate this Christmas. I thought that was a brilliant suggestion. After all, what could be more meaningful than the gift of giving this Christmas season?
Not sure if Iceman went ahead with that idea because there was some resistance from some of his colleagues when he told them the idea. *Rolls eyes*. Perhaps some people prefer white elephant gifts after all. I suppose I could dig up some useless photo frame for them…
I have a gift exchange thingy in my office too! It’s very tedious. I’d rather everyone just took $10 out of their wallets and exchanged that? hahaha 😛
me too me too.. but i know who am i getting for.. n i regret asking her what she wants.. haahha
im going to give utg mindless gift.. but its useful.. 😛
Aiyah.. useful gift means not mindless lah. Mindless gifts are like… mini photo frames (where u have to cut your photo to 1/8 the original size), or small ornaments (except rabbit ones), candles (come on man… I use a torch in the event of a black out lor), chunky key chains (as though my keys weren’t heavy enough)…
I did go ahead with the idea regardless of the resistance from my colleagues. I even included a Christmas card with detailed instructions on what to do with the cheque. The silly part after the gift exchange was some of my colleagues kept badgering me to open mine and I said I won’t until Christmas. I asked why must I open it now and another colleague said “so that she can exchange hers if she likes yours…”. *faints*. I’m starting to think that k’s idea of just taking out $10 and exchanging it is even better.
Then you can swop $10 notes in case you don’t like yours – e.g. mebbe u want the plastic type… or u want a less crumpled note…
brand new $10 will be a hot favourite… give Ringgit 10?? heah