The rules were sent in an email three weeks ago. Thirty dollar limit, wrapped, bring it Thursday. You read the email, thought "easy," and did nothing about it until this morning.
Here is the thing about white elephant. The winning gift is never the nicest one. It is the one that gets stolen twice. That gift is always funny, always slightly too specific, and always something the person who ends up with it will genuinely wear.
Every shirt below is exactly $30, which is the whole limit and not a penny of it wasted on shipping, because Economy shipping in the continental US is free.
The one that gets opened first and stolen immediately
There is a specific sound a room makes when someone reads this out loud at a work party. It is not a laugh exactly. It is the noise of eleven adults deciding at the same moment that they are going to steal this.
The joke is that it is the least sophisticated insult available to an adult human, and it is also the one that best describes several people you work with. Nobody can argue with it. That is why it travels.
The one for whoever brings up 2009 unprompted
Every group has someone who mentions a specific game, a specific season, or a specific coach, and does it with the timing of a man who has been waiting for the topic to come up. He is not sad about it. He genuinely had a great time.
This shirt says the thing he says, but first, which takes all the air out of it in the friendliest possible way. There is a cheer version too, and both get claimed fast in a room of thirty-somethings.
The one that is just funny and asks nothing of anyone
Some white elephant gifts are a bit. This one is a sloth admitting to something. It works on a grandparent, a nephew, a coworker in accounting, and a person you have never met who came as somebody's plus one.
When a gift exchange includes someone's actual mother, this is the safe pick that is still funny. That combination is rarer than it sounds.
The one that is one word and still says everything
One syllable. Infinite applications. Disappointment, delight, disbelief, and mild betrayal, all handled by the same four letters.
We wrote a whole post about why this word does so much work, which is more thought than anyone at a white elephant party will give it, and that is fine. It gets stolen anyway.
Two rules that make you good at this
Buy the joke that is about the wearer, not about a third party. A shirt that makes fun of the person opening it is a bit. A shirt that makes fun of somebody else in the room is a situation.
And buy unisex. You are shopping for a name you drew out of a hat, and you do not know their size. All of these run true, and a gift receipt in the box costs nothing.
If the exchange you are dreading is the office one specifically, the rules are slightly different and the margin for error is smaller. Our funny gift guide for hard-to-shop-for people covers the safer end of the catalog.
