White Elephant

It's Christmas time! In lieu of this many of you will attend, or have already attended a White Elephant party. This is a long standing tradition that dates back centuries ago. Now, most of you do not know where the tradition of the White Elephant comes from.

Please allow me to enlighten you.

In many South Asian countries, white elephants were highly regarded and was usually a sign of great political power. Why do you think the Republican insignia is an elephant? It's been passed down for centuries. Now, white elephants are rare creatures, always have been, always will be. To see one was a great omen and meant good tidings. Usually this included the destruction of one's village. Why this was great, no one really understands, but it was totally highly regarded by many people.  White Elephants would trump through the village and destroy everything in their path. For some reason they are the angriest version of the usually peaceful loving pachyderm. So it was a blessing to have one come upon you, but a hardship as well.

So after years of enduring tortuous amounts of damage, villagers started to build little white elephant statues in ward off the destruction of their homes. This worked out so well that annually they would gather to gift these presents to one another on the basis of keeping a thriving village commune while also being able to be graced by the presence of a white elephant. The reason this was annual was because these were usually poor villages (white elephants hardly ever strike large, rich towns. In fact, the rather seem to parade those towns as royalty) so the materials used were cheap and broke in about a years time. Also, since you only needed a little statue to keep the beasts away, economically, it did not make sense to build an extremely valuable piece when a mangy thing worked well enough.

This is where we pull this particular tradition from. If you were wondering why we always need to spend $5 or less it is due to the cheaply made statues by the villagers, and why the heck it is called a white elephant party in the first place is because of the gifting of white elephants in those South Asian countries. The more you know.