‘The Office’ Showed Us the Right and Wrong Way to Play White Elephant 15 Years Ago

White Elephant, Dirty Santa, Jingle Jinx, Yankee Swap, Rudolph’s Regift, Nasty Christmas, Grinch Gifting—it’s known by so many names that you probably didn’t catch that I made up three of those myself. Whatever you call it, it’s the annual holiday game that mixes strategy and schemes with the holly and the jolly. I live for it. It’s been part of my Christmas tradition for every year of my life, and I take The Game (as you sometimes just have to call it, ominously) very seriously.

It’s also the one tradition that almost never pops up in movies or on TV, even though Santa Swap comes with a structure that makes for thrilling television. And when characters in a movie do go to a Yankee Regift party, they never actually play it. It’s happened twice this year alone, in Hallmark’s Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Sweater and Hulu’s Happiest Season. Give me the game, people! Show me the game!

It’s a Christmas coincidence that this year has teased multiple Nasty Elephant games, because December 6 also happens to be the anniversary of the definitive White Elephant/Yankee Swap/Snowblind Stealers game in all of fiction: The Office’s “Christmas Party.” That episode totally nails the intense awkwardness of forcing joy and “partying” after hours at work. It also shows how Nasty Presents should be played—a controversial take, to be sure!

The Office’s riff on The Game is a quintessential Michael Scott moment. He hypes up something incredibly lame—an office Secret Santa game, where you’re at best going to get something that you keep in a drawer until you move again—and turns it into something actively painful. Not only does Michael do the dastardly deed of blowing past the $20 limit by getting his man-crush Ryan a video iPod (the clearest reminder that this episode is 15 years old), he has a full-blown hissy fit when he gets Phyllis’ handmade oven mitt because it’s not on the level of the video iPod that he shouldn’t have bought in the first place. Oh, Michael—we love to watch you on TV, but we’d hate to spend the holidays (or any day) with you IRL.

Michael’s solution: turn Secret Santa into Yankee Swap and have his employees steal personalized gifts from each other. This is a bad idea, even though it gives us priceless moments like Kelly holding up the creepy jazz babies poster intended for Angela.

But within this very bad idea is a good idea, re: The Game—and one that I have had firmly in place for my own White Elephant game for 14 straight Christmases: buy good gifts. There is no reason to dread your annual Grand Theft Xmas game, although I understand why plenty of people do. That’s because a lot of people, from co-workers to cousins, bring bland or actively bad gifts! A $10 Starbucks gift card is fine, but who wants to steal the idea of getting a Frappuccino eventually? And yeah, it’s hilarious watching grandma open up a box with an old Wild Things VHS tape, but now grandma can’t play the game anymore because no one wants to steal a Wild Things VHS tape! This is why while Michael was wrong to turn Secret Santa into Dirty Santa, he revealed the fun way to play the game: put in stuff that people want, like a video iPod or a nice teapot (which may or may not have a love letter in it). If the employees knew ahead of time that there was no price limit and that the game was The Game, they’d be at least 40% less annoyed with Michael’s tomfoolery.

Overall, “Christmas Party” provides solid rules to follow for people figuring out how to do socially-distanced Reindeer Games games this year.

1. Make sure everyone knows what you’re doing. You’re playing Yankee Swap/White Elephant/Dirty Santa and not Secret Santa. That’s crucial.
2. Everyone buys good gifts! In fact, go so far as to buy a gift that you know for certain one or two people playing would love to have. The point of the game is stealing, not watching a dozen people open average gifts!
3. No whining, period! That’s Michael’s most damning mistake in this episode, all the hurt feelings. Michael should have clearly seen how much work Phyllis put into that oven mitt, and he definitely should have noticed how much his screaming upset her! If you tell yourself that everyone playing put in something that they think is good, then you have no fear of feeling tricked by opening a bag of old Fire Sauce packets from Taco Bell. And if you do open a bag of sauce, then you can take the high road and assume that one of your friends actually thought that was a good gift (come to think of it, Fire Sauce goes well with everything…)
4. No price limit. This is the hottest take of all, hotter than Fire Sauce. But for the last decade and change, I have had no price limit on the gifts in my annual, 30+ players Dirty Santa game—and it makes the game fully wild. There is never a dull moment in a game where you could, at any moment, open a Chewbacca Snuggie or a new Keurig. Now—this is a dangerous rule! This is the bad deed Michael did when he bought Ryan an iPod. But! Michael’s sin (among many in this episode) was establishing a $20 limit and then ignoring it X20. The lack of a price limit only really works if you know your group of friends/family (definitely not co-workers, don’t do this at work!) well enough to know that they’re all good sports (see Rule #3) and that they find value in items that goes beyond a price tag. Yeah, the iPod was a big hit, but so was the pleasant little teapot that Jim brought! Good gifts come in all price points! This is a risky rule and it’s not for everybody, but oh lord does it make The Game a thrill.
5. How to play Socially Distanced White Elephant: You’re gonna need Zoom or something similar, first. Ahead of the game, everyone submits photos of an item they want to gift during the game. Maybe they send them to a neutral gamesmaster designated to run the game, maybe they email them to separate email account for the game, maybe they hold onto the photos to share when someone “opens” their gift. Your call! Game play proceeds as normal: all your Zoom players draw numbers and go in order opening new presents and stealing presents. When someone picks a present to “open,” they see the photo of the item (via screen sharing or a link in the chat, etc.). Then people can steal, swap, bargain, etc. over the photos of the “opened” presents as normal. At the end of the game, everyone buys the present they “brought” and, upon checkout, enters in the address of the person who ended up with it, so the items are shipped to recipient’s home.

It’s probably fine that TV shows and movies generally avoid getting into the intense gameplay of Yankee Switchee, because The Office did it perfectly 15 years ago. If we only need one White Ele-fun episode, “Christmas Party” is the one to have. It uses The Game in a creative way, squeezes as much drama out of it as possible, and even inadvertently gives some tips on how to make the game a lot of fun. Go on and try this at home—unless you know someone who would riot over getting a cute, handmade oven mitt. Then maybe keep your Dirty Santa game as boring as possible.

Stream The Office "Christmas Party" on Netflix