Yankee Swaps Suck
'Tis the season to get totally screwed by people you thought were your friends.
Xteen and I went to a work Christmas party of hers and despite my misanthropy and xenophobia, I actually had a pretty good time. Until...
...the Yankee Swap.
For those of you a little south of the Mason/Dixon line, let me fill you in on the fiasco and abomination that is the Yankee Swap.
- Everyone at the party brings a gift within a certain dollar range. Most of these gifts are hooch. Almost all of the others are stuff that can be found here.
- Each person who brought a gift draws a number, usually handwritten in a Grey Goose-ravaged script and placed into the host's expensive crystal bowl that was given to them as a wedding gift and will, most assuredly, end up in approximately a gazillion pieces, strewn on the hardwood floor of the dining room, by evening's end.
- The person fortunate enough to pick #1 has their choice of any gift under the Christmas tree, Hanukkah bush, or any other religiously ethnic shrubbery. They open it. It, pretty much, sucks.
- This process proceeds numerically, the catch being: whoever follows gift receiver #1 opens their gift and, if they like a gift opened before theirs, they can insult the person who brought their gift, by shunning it like a leper, and giving it to another person, whose gift they want instead. They then wrestle the gift away from the clutches of their buddy, leaving their friend with something that a hobo would probably chuck into a dumpster.
- Sound complicated, eh? Not really. What it boils down to is this: Don't like your gift? Steal someone else's. That's the true meaning of Christmas. Just imagine if this happened back in Bethlehem. One of the Magi brings myrrh and puts it in the stable. Joseph picks it up, opens it to reveal whatever the fuck myrrh is, and decides to exchange it with the iTunes gift card that the Little Drummer Boy got. Surely Jesus would have approved, especially if it meant he got to throw "My Humps" on his Nano.
So, we bring a gift that I think is pretty cool. Instead of getting the requisite bottle of ripple or a set of dryer balls, I decide to get a DVD of a movie that we thought was really excellent.
Xteen gets number 9 out of about 15. She picks a gift bag and opens it up to reveal a modestly-sized bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream. I'm not a big fan of Bailey's, but it's booze, so I do what any normal person in this situation would do:
I tell Xteen to hide that shit the fuck away and, if anyone asks what we have, you tell them we have a Homer Simpson Chia-Head and leave it at that. Oh, and you might want to mention that you developed some open sores over the last five minutes that are leaking burnt sienna-hued pus over the bag and gift contained therein.
A few more people pick and decide to keep their gifts. This includes the person who selects the movie that I chose to give for the Yankee Swap. They open it and reveal it to the crowd as if they had just received a tissue-paper swaddled version of gonorrhea. They're not happy. But rather than piss off their friends, they decide to swallow their disappointment (apparently, they thought they were going to get their most valued wish from Santa at a $10 limit Yankee Swap) and kept the friggin thing.
This level of civility continues until some chick opens a gift bag that includes two chocolate spoons (?!) and a gift card to Dunkin' fuckin' Donuts, which, last time I checked, served fucking donuts and coffee with no alcohol in it.
This heathen decides to actually follow the God-forsaken rules of the Yankee Swap and sniffs out Xteen who, at this point, has taken on a fake mustache and has decorated the bag of Bailey's with porcupine needles and biohazard stickers.
This does not dissuade the chocolate spoon chick who proclaims, without a hint of apology, "Sorry Xteen, but my delirium tremors really need this Baileys or I will have to go sell my body on the street like I usually do to get my fix." Or something like that.
So, in the blink of an eye, the fucking hooch was gone and we were left with dreams of a large decaf and a bear claw to tide us over.
It was like opening up a gift to find Jenna Jameson only to have someone steal it from you and replace it with:
Xteen and I went to a work Christmas party of hers and despite my misanthropy and xenophobia, I actually had a pretty good time. Until...
...the Yankee Swap.
For those of you a little south of the Mason/Dixon line, let me fill you in on the fiasco and abomination that is the Yankee Swap.
- Everyone at the party brings a gift within a certain dollar range. Most of these gifts are hooch. Almost all of the others are stuff that can be found here.
- Each person who brought a gift draws a number, usually handwritten in a Grey Goose-ravaged script and placed into the host's expensive crystal bowl that was given to them as a wedding gift and will, most assuredly, end up in approximately a gazillion pieces, strewn on the hardwood floor of the dining room, by evening's end.
- The person fortunate enough to pick #1 has their choice of any gift under the Christmas tree, Hanukkah bush, or any other religiously ethnic shrubbery. They open it. It, pretty much, sucks.
- This process proceeds numerically, the catch being: whoever follows gift receiver #1 opens their gift and, if they like a gift opened before theirs, they can insult the person who brought their gift, by shunning it like a leper, and giving it to another person, whose gift they want instead. They then wrestle the gift away from the clutches of their buddy, leaving their friend with something that a hobo would probably chuck into a dumpster.
- Sound complicated, eh? Not really. What it boils down to is this: Don't like your gift? Steal someone else's. That's the true meaning of Christmas. Just imagine if this happened back in Bethlehem. One of the Magi brings myrrh and puts it in the stable. Joseph picks it up, opens it to reveal whatever the fuck myrrh is, and decides to exchange it with the iTunes gift card that the Little Drummer Boy got. Surely Jesus would have approved, especially if it meant he got to throw "My Humps" on his Nano.
So, we bring a gift that I think is pretty cool. Instead of getting the requisite bottle of ripple or a set of dryer balls, I decide to get a DVD of a movie that we thought was really excellent.
Xteen gets number 9 out of about 15. She picks a gift bag and opens it up to reveal a modestly-sized bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream. I'm not a big fan of Bailey's, but it's booze, so I do what any normal person in this situation would do:
I tell Xteen to hide that shit the fuck away and, if anyone asks what we have, you tell them we have a Homer Simpson Chia-Head and leave it at that. Oh, and you might want to mention that you developed some open sores over the last five minutes that are leaking burnt sienna-hued pus over the bag and gift contained therein.
A few more people pick and decide to keep their gifts. This includes the person who selects the movie that I chose to give for the Yankee Swap. They open it and reveal it to the crowd as if they had just received a tissue-paper swaddled version of gonorrhea. They're not happy. But rather than piss off their friends, they decide to swallow their disappointment (apparently, they thought they were going to get their most valued wish from Santa at a $10 limit Yankee Swap) and kept the friggin thing.
This level of civility continues until some chick opens a gift bag that includes two chocolate spoons (?!) and a gift card to Dunkin' fuckin' Donuts, which, last time I checked, served fucking donuts and coffee with no alcohol in it.
This heathen decides to actually follow the God-forsaken rules of the Yankee Swap and sniffs out Xteen who, at this point, has taken on a fake mustache and has decorated the bag of Bailey's with porcupine needles and biohazard stickers.
This does not dissuade the chocolate spoon chick who proclaims, without a hint of apology, "Sorry Xteen, but my delirium tremors really need this Baileys or I will have to go sell my body on the street like I usually do to get my fix." Or something like that.
So, in the blink of an eye, the fucking hooch was gone and we were left with dreams of a large decaf and a bear claw to tide us over.
It was like opening up a gift to find Jenna Jameson only to have someone steal it from you and replace it with:
So, thanks a lot, Yankee Swap. Your Christmas spirit sucks balls. And not the dryer kind either.
Still trying to find a taker for a Ronco food dehydrator,
- Dim.
posted by Dim at 12/16/2006 01:39:00 AM
10 Comments:
come on now..christmas is not that bad..
This year at my faculty Christmas party, I ended up with a mirror with a beagle painted on it and J. got a hippopotamus drain spout cover. Bet you're jealous!
That's tragic , the chick taking the baileys though I would have screwed off the lid and took a sip before giving it to her... that really would have got her....
dude..that is horrid. I like coffee and bear claws..but man..that blows.
Funny funny funny
I remember as a kid, I was like 5, one of my friends mothers threw a christmas party.
We lived in an extremly Jewish town and only four kids showed up.
We had a gift swap that followed the same rules found in this post. My mother donated markers.... yes, colored markers which I told her sucked!
Anyway, the kid who's mother threw the party wound up stuck with those markers.... He threw a fit!
I still see him crying and carrying on... "I don't want markers... this gift stinks!!!"
lol
OH, that stinks. I agree with Ramblin. That would have been funny to take a drink first. Here's hoping the rest of the holiday goes better for you.
Rosie, nah, you're actually not encouraged to insult the gift. But by taking someone else's gift, you are insulting the one you got. Chalk that one up to the ol' Dim embellishment.
Just about to do our yearly Yankee Swap here in the old sod! It is a tradition that the Irish did not need but, like McDonalds and Gangsta Rap, I felt it was my duty as a good American to inflict upon them! Now they are hooked! Another one for us!
Very funny stuff, Dim! And I would kill for a Dunkin Donuts coffee and cruller at this point so quit bitching! ;-)
At our school Christmas party the other night, they did something like that, but not quite so blatantly "I don't want that"-ish. After you picked your number, but BEFORE choosing a new gift, you could steal from someone else, who now had to go pick out another gift. There was stealing, but no rejecting. It's nicer that way.
We played a version of this at my family's Christmas get-together a few years ago...try getting your grandma with Alzheimer's to give up her gift. Good Lord...I still have nightmares about trying to play that with her. She literally threw a tantrum.
Merry Christmas, Dim!
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