Elephant, White or any other color

Some people see my lack of commercialism as a lack of Christmas spirit. It really isn't so. I love Christmas. I love that through Christmas we can have an excuse to be nicer to our neighbor, share a little more joy and enjoy the songs of the season. I love the time we can reflect on a manger, some sheep and some wise men as well. In fact - that really is my focus. I know Christ wasn't born in December (because if he were the shepards wouldn't had been keeping watch over their sheep. They would have slaughtered them and made profit by winter. Spring and summer is more the watching period), but I see the joy in singing the sounds of Christ's birth in cold weather on the door steps of friends and other random listeners.

(I used to go caroling in Rexburg every year and I always went to this one lady's house where we would sing 5 or 6 songs for and she would just weep with Joy. Her husband had been a music teacher at Ricks College and he had brought home his choirs to sing for her as a Christmas gift. When he died, they stopped coming. I was grateful for those two winters when we could.)

Most people don't think I have Christmas spirit, though. My father and I are not exchanging gifts this year (instead I used the money to give myself the Christmas gift of a fixed tooth.) and some people think that's horrible.

So to help fix some of the imagery that I'm anti- Christmas, I decided to participate in the White Elephant gift exchange at the work party. Little did I know what a hard task this was going to be. Do you know how hard it is to find a white Elephant in December? It is by far not an easy task. The rules were it had to be a white Elephant that cost less than $5. That makes it even harder. For example, I found a white Elephant Tea set, but it cost $15. So I couldn't buy that. I even found one for $8, but that was $3 over. Any every where I looked I was coming up empty handed.

Someone suggested I go to Goodwill. I found white Santas, a white pig figurine, a white reindeer figurine and a white buffalo figurine - but sadly there was no white elephants of any kind. One of my friends suggested I go buy a shirt and she could embroider a white Elephant on the shirt for me. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and that didn't materialize.

I gave up shopping for a white elephant and instead took this book from my bookshelf in hopes that no one noticed it wasn't a white Elephant. Boy was I releaved when we started opening gifts. No one had a white elephant. I guess it was just as hard for them to find one as it was for me to find one. But instead of bringing a book, a lot of then brought crap. Someone even brought a home pregnancy test and wrapped that up (which wouldn't have been so funny if one of the 35 women I worked with had unwrapped it, but of the two guys in the room - the other guy got the home pregnancy test. I wonder if the advertisements are correct - I wonder if it is the most signifigant piece of technology he will ever pee on?).

Anyway, I cannot believe how hard it is to find a white elephant for under $5 in the month of December. I've decided that for next year I'm going to buy a gray elephant in October and just paint the darn thing white and call it done. No wonder I'm not a capitalist when it comes to this season - it's so hard finding the right perfect gift.