Who knows what a White Elephant sale is?
Yes, boys and girls, that’s right. It’s when people take a bunch of crap they don’t want out of their cellars, garages, and attics and drop it off at church to sell to unsuspecting shoppers. I am one of the unsuspecting church volunteers* who has to schlep that crap and put it out on the tables, making it look its 1984 Country Ducks and Pineapples best.
At our church, in an effort to stave off the extreme guilt I feel due to my semi-annual Holly-Lily attendance, I volunteer to help with the Christmas bazaar, normally in the White Elephant Room, where people bring shit in and other people take that shit home for like a buck.
The room is filled with candles, placemats, crocheted Christmas ornaments, knick knacks, 70s Tupperware, books upon books, random toys a kid got and didn’t even want to open, and then tons more knick knacks. There are two old ladies who run the room. They hate me. Normally I love old ladies, but dude, these two have to go to confession the day after they deal with me because they want to kill me.
I honestly think I saw one of them sneaking up behind me today with an old glass Corningware frying pan. I’d be dead right now if the arthritis in her 90-something year old shoulder hadn’t kicked in.
Why? You ask? Why do they hate me so much? Let me tell you.
A few years ago I had the bright idea to start a “Secret Santa” room, where the kids could come, pick out something for their moms or dads or sister or whoever, and we’d wrap and tag it for them. Seems like a nice idea, yes? Kids learn giving instead of getting is what Christmas is all about, yada yada.
But the White Elephant Ladies, who are ferociously territorial in their little White Elephant Jungle, do not like this, because they are very competitive about their room making the most money. Also, I am empowered to ‘choose’ (they say ‘steal’) items that are new from the White Elephant Room that the kids in my Secret Santa Room might like giving as gifts.
Here’s how it goes every year: stuff comes in to the White Elephant Room, I choose some stuff for Secret Santa, throw it in a box, and put it aside with a label. They find, shred, and hide evidence of the box and proceed to put everything I’ve ‘taken’ back out in the White Elephant Room. I take it back, then they take it back, like some kind of macabre revolving door of Avon Christmas earrings.
I try each year to convince them that all the money goes to the same church, so if the kids are paying $2 to buy a gift and have it wrapped, the church is making as much or more as in the White Elephant Room where they just give ‘a donation’ (which can be ‘a dime’).
Then there are the disputes over what should go in the Secret Santa Room. I choose things (based on my knowledge as a mother of four kids) based on what kids would choose for a mom or dad or little or big sister or brother, etc. etc.- and items that are easily wrappable by the kid wrapping volunteers. They think a Ziploc baggie of Legos or a “barely used” pot holder would be a perfectly acceptable gift.
Last year I took an empty diaper wipe box (I could not make. this. shit. up.) off a table and threw it out. They took it out of the trash and put it back on the table. I was like, ‘Why are we trying to sell an empty diaper wipe box?’ and they were all ‘Someone might need it for something’ and I was all ‘Ew, germs, diapers…’ and I know, I know, when people have lived through the Depression, and I should be more patient, and whatever but…
MY GOD, you didn’t see the three wise men bringing the newborn baby Jesus an EMPTY DIAPER WIPE BOX for his birthday, did you, ladies!?!??!!!!!!!
Each year, I pray for patience in dealing with them. And each year God ignores me, and then probably pulls up a chair and some popcorn to laugh hysterically and watch the flying potpourri bags.
I know, I know.
I’m going straight to hell.. and it’s gonna be filled with knick knacks.
*I can hear you laughing from here. In Maryland.**
** While I agree it’s cool my state has my name in it already, they should totally rename the state Marymacland.
I am one of those PTA mum's, and our christmas fair is this saturday. My job is to organise the volunteers, which means a two week rostering mania trying to get the names and the slots to equal each other. It's always the same people who volunteer anyway.
But that aside, there will be the "secrets room" which is stocked with loads of small presents for mums, dads, granparents, aunts, uncles, etc – where the kids can come in, choose, and wrap a present in secret. No parents are allowed in!
And we also have the secondhand toys room, which is full of all that white elephant style stuff. But there isn't really an overlap with what is in these two rooms.
But sometimes you look at what's been donated to the secondhand room, and you just have to bin it. Maybe not as bad as an empty diaper wipe box, but a board game with no counters, and the board ripped in half should have gone in the RUBBISH, not the donation pile. Some people are just odd.
And more…
My first ever flute came from a white elephant sale. It served me well, from that very first "B" that I learnt to play, with my left hand pointer finger, all the way down to… erm… "G" two fingers later. After that, it became apparent that it was – without mincing words – a pile of old tosh*.
* I tried to write a swear word there, but I just couldn't. Yay for me and the not swearing anymore campaign!
That is the funniest thing I have read almost ever. I would volunteer each year just to annoy the shit out of the old ladies. I like old men not ladies they are too entitled….
I love your Secret Santa Idea.. and tell them I said so.
Good luck, I might just pull up a chair and popcorn too.
Seriously? Who knew Church could be such a Smackdown? Times like this I thank the good Lord that I am Jewish. I don't think the Sisterhood is quite so snarky.
Meanwhile, as far as a prize for the most Random Crap Ever Saved By Another Human Being, I think my grandma deserves a nomination. When she died, we cleaned out her apartment. Next to the requisite stacks of old TV Guides and magazines going back to the Stone Age (and piled so high they threatened to topple over and crush me), was a box containing the cardboard oval rounds you pop out of the top of a new tissue box. Not the boxes themselves (which one could argue could actually, possibly, maybe, kinda, sorta come in handy). Nope. My grandma saved those oval rounds. I've never been able to figure out why either.
Happy Holidays! I hope the White Elephant doesn't crush you.
I hope one of them gets an empty diaper wipe box under their tree this year! Talk about hard core! Yikes!
I know this must be a true story because who has the creativity to make this shit up? I need to get out more. I need to volunteer at my church just so I have something to blog about.
Funny as hell. I'm popping my popcorn right this minute.
Oh lordy. That must be frickin' hilarious and IRRITATING AS HELL. I wanted to sucker punch them just READING about it.
I think that you should try a peace offering. The day of the sale, show up early & give them a batch of homemade cookies.
In said diaper wipe box.
What you really need to do is wear a blazer that has the name of a funeral home on it. That way they would be scared of you and leave you alone.
also
inside said blazer you need to have a flask of whatever it is you like to get hammered on. For me? Bourbon works the best, but vodka [Vodka Logic would be so proud] would be better to mask in the end.
so if they don't leave you alone you are too drunk to care. Unless you are a mean drunk. If that's the case, forget everything I said and choke them out with a stupid $0.50 shoelace from a table near you.
Never heard of a White Elephant sale but we did used to have parties where everyone would bring a White Elephant gift. Those are the BEST!!!
I can't believe people would even pay for that stuff! LOL
“Bazaar” Is such a fitting name for those types of functions, isn’t it?
Haha I'm with the first person that left that up there as a comment!
“Bazaar” Is such a fitting name for those types of functions, isn’t it?
If only I could be a fly on the wall.
Oh silly MaryMac – don't you know the three wise men relied on empty diaper wipe boxes to transport the myrrh?
*LMAO*
Glad to see they have kept the Christ in Christmas…
I've told my kids if I ever get like those old biddies you described they are allowed to shoot me…
Those ladies sound like fun! Remember the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld? You could be the "bazaar nazi"!!!
I'm going to hell to (but for completely different reasons), you wanna hang out?!
Don't you want to do this twice a year? Have a real Farts and Craps festival in the spring. Maybe you could make a diaper wipe box out of legos!
LMAO……thanks for the laugh!! i sooooo needed it today!! just think, those ladies can't live much longer!! ooops, i will be joining in the that handbasket to hell!
You are so right, my definition of hell is filled with knick knacks, and empty KFC buckets actually… not sure why.
I have actively even obsessively avoided White Elephant sales for just reasons like this. Altough I do think you are perhaps a bit hard-assed about the diaper wipe box – so many potential uses… mini lunch box, fine jewellery travel storage, Betsey Ross memorial coin collection holder, SPAM label saver…. c'mon, those ladies were thinking ahead!!!
Another faaantastic post – you always make me smile!
those old timey church ladies are always wound a little too tight!!!! I think it is the wicker from the purses they grasp so tightly!!!!!
I would pay serious money to be at that bazaar.
BAHAHAHA! I laugh because I think those same women go to my church. Here. In California.
I’m serious. Why are some old women so intense?!
GEEZ!! Good luck with that.
Saw your post title on the Peeling an Orange with a screwdriver blog and hopped over.
I just want to ask What the hell would Jesus do with an empty diaper wipe box?
The idea is not for you to get drunk and give them something more to snipe about. You need to get them loosened up (stoned) and see what happens. Either way it could go, it will be a post to remember. I suggest 1mg of Xanax each in their tea. This will be fun!
Oy.
Hey – fun hanging out with you last night!
I got told once that God doesn't give you patience he gives you tasks to make you LEARN patience. So all that praying to GIVE you patience is just back firing. Just ask God to please not make you kill those ladies, but then maybe that's what he wants. Maybe he wants you to kill those old ladies because it's their time.
I haven't been to a church Bazaar since uhmm I think high school. The Christmas Bazaar that they held in the Armory across the street from my house every year was better. All hand made things, no crap. But it sucked because people would park in our driveway all the time.
We attend a White Elephant party every year, and our contribution was a latch hook rug that my husband made sometime in the 1970's. But what we got in return…a nasty jockstrap!
I choked on my popcorn reading this. Thanks for that.
MY GOD, you are funny.
Although I interact with many real-life people during the day (ok, usually just my 2 kids and the liquor-store clerk), you always give me the best laughs.
Great, funny post.
When I attend all the town Christmas fairs (except at the Unitarian church, it's a Holiday fair) tomorrow, I will keep an eye out for old ladies selling tea cozies made from diaper wipes boxes.
LMAO!! Little church ladies are always doing things like that (well, in my experince, not to stereotype or anything
).
the old bags are creepy and sinister…but give them a break…in their old, demented minds they feel like they are serving others…but if you're determined to f*** with their minds, ask their opinion about American Idol…and when they start to clutch and grab about how they wouldn't waste their time on such crap whip out a used tennis racquet (priced to sell at $0.50) and begin trying to deep throat it (the handle, not the other end, unless you're a sport.) then confidently strut away shouting, "Game, set and match"
trust me…little old ladies hate this