Photograph by Suzy Gorman
While every family has its own set of unique traditions, I’ve personally always been gaga for the horrible gift exchange.
Executive editor Stefene Russell’s family has taken the white elephant exchange to new heights—um, make that depths. The same questionable gifts tend to resurface. For example, there’s that painting of Jesus “with some cannibalistic undertones” that Stefene’s aunt and mother created in high school. And there’s no ignoring her aunt’s old baby doll, Cynsi, who gets traded around and reincarnated as everything from Cyndi Lauper to Steve Irwin, the now-deceased crocodile hunter.
“We shop at thrift stores to see who can find the worst,” Stefene says.
In my family, the horrible-gift swap was a tradition between my father and my parents’ best friend, Ann. They started in the ’50s, when both couples—then young, with toddlers—lived across from each other on Arundel Place, and they kept it up right up through Christmas 2006, before my father, then 90, passed away.
As with Stefene’s clan, the worse the present, the better it was. One year, Dad gave our dear Auntie Ann a white mouse, which she accidentally let loose in the Chase’s Tenderloin Room. Then there was the Christmas that she gave my dad a toilet turned planter, much to my mother’s horror. Another of my favorites: the nonfunctioning antique parking meter she had cemented in our driveway. (I once had a blind date, back when it seemed I was destined to date every single man my mother could track down in this town, who spent a half hour trying to put money in the meter before venturing to the front door. As soon as he explained, my father turned to me and said, “You don’t have to go on this one.” I didn’t.)
While all gifts were more or less appreci-ated, some were actually hits. The dental chair from my father’s office became Auntie Ann’s favorite place to needlepoint. My father wore the peacock-themed chenille bedspread turned bathrobe until it was threadbare. Part of the tradition was exchanging the gifts at lunch on Christmas Eve. My siblings and I (and Auntie Ann’s children) knew we had reached the level of acceptability when we were invited to join them. (It didn’t happen until we could imbibe a cocktail.)
When we were disseminating all of my parents’ belongings, those gifts were the ones we were most reluctant to lose. Some went back to the giver; many still reside in our homes. And all of them bring back cherished and hilarious memories of a great and hallowed tradition.
