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Published on 12/07/1998 All articles from this issue

The gift exchange party at Christmastime

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By Clyde Noel

A Side of Clyde

Tonight, a group of us from the Town Crier are going to a Christmas dinner party. On my holiday colored invitation it said bring along a gift for a white elephant exchange.

That reminds me of a gift exchange I attended at Christmastime in the fifth grade. I started to think back to those wonderful days when I looked forward to opening those gift boxes wrapped in colorful red and green wrapping paper. It was during Depression years and quite a few boxes were wrapped in brown paper lunch bags. All the gifts were lying under the Christmas tree.

Around 2 p.m., the teacher would break out cookies and punch and the party would start. Miss Shoemaker, our teacher, placed numbers in a cigar box and each student took a number. When the student's number was called they would go up to the tree and take a gift.

Billy Cooper was one of the first kids to select a gift. He selected a small wrapped package and inside was a Baby Ruth candy bar. Billy was the kind of kid who would bring a candy bar for morning recess and lick it all over before taking a bite so nobody would ask him to share it. He took off the candy bar wrapper and immediately went to work.

Harry Kirby went next and as he returned to his desk he kept looking at the holiday wrapped paper with "Peace on Earth" printed all over. When he opened his gift, it contained a 5-inch toy pistol. Things haven't changed much on earth for Harry, and we haven't heard from him in years.

My boyhood friend, Walt Cronin went up next. He was just thrown out of the Cub Scouts the week before because he only walked elderly women across the street halfway. He took his gift home without unwrapping it.

When I picked up my gift, it was one of those stupid wooden paddles with a ball and rubber string attached. You hit the stupid ball with the stupid paddle and the stupid ball comes back and you hit it again.

My gift turns out to be fun for some awkward child under 5. They paid exactly 39 cents for my gift, and they could have bought something useful and more educational for a boy of my stature. They could have given me one of those magazines they kept on the back shelf at the drugstore.

Probably the most useful white elephant gift was provided by Miss Shoemaker. It was a subscription to Boys Life. Billy Williams selected it because of the lavish wrapping paper. Anybody caught reading Boy's Life was considered (a) a momma's boy, (b) a nerd, (c) sissy and some other things the Town Crier wouldn't print.

We used to taunt Billy for months afterward. "Hey, Boy Scout, what's the centerfold this month in Boy's Life? A picture of a tent?"

After all the gifts were opened and the "Merry Christmas -thank you very much," began, Billy went up to the teacher and said, "Thank you very much for the gift of Boys Life."

"It was nothing," Miss Shoemaker said.

"I know that, but my mother would make me thank you and say Merry Christmas anyway."