Color caricature of DanaA colored marker caricature of Dana with a slightly oversized head, shoulder-length brown hair with chunky highlights, curtain bangs and two butterfly clips, hazel eyes behind round tortoiseshell glasses, one eyebrow raised, red lipstick, a closed smile and a black choker, wearing a denim jacket and holding a red gift with a gold ribbon, against a pale blue swoosh.

Hi, I'm Dana.

I'm from Milwaukee, and I care about who goes home with the Big Mouth Billy Bass more than any adult reasonably should.

I build websites for a living, mostly for small businesses who ask for "something simple" and mean a booking calendar, a shop and a newsletter. I've also been playing white elephant since the '90s, at offices, family Christmases and one book club that never fully recovered. Somewhere along the way I became the person everyone texts in December to ask how stealing works again.

In 2020 every office swap moved to Zoom, nobody could remember the rules, and I got tired of typing them into the chat. So I put them in a shared doc for my office party, along with a short list of gifts that had actually been fought over. The doc got forwarded far enough that strangers started asking me for edit access, and I did what anyone with my job would do: built it a proper home, which took one weekend and has eaten every December since. This is the list's seventh year.

In fairness, my own record is mixed. I once brought a fondue set to an office party. It was not stolen. It was barely acknowledged. Everything on the gift lists here is, in a sense, me learning from that night.

Mostly I love this game because of the room. For an hour, a bunch of people who barely talk at work end up on the same side, even while they're robbing each other.

Email me

If you've got a rules argument that needs settling, or a gift that got stolen four times at your party and deserves a spot on the list, write to me at dana@whiteelephantgiftclub.com. December is busy, so give me a few days.

About the site

The White Elephant Gift Club is a small, independent site for people running or joining a gift swap. It has the rules, a free game host, printables, and gift ideas tagged by how fast you can get them. Despite the name, there's nothing to join and nothing to pay for.

How I pick gifts

Gifts are ranked by steal factor, my estimate of how hard people fight over them, a metric I take more seriously than I should. A $10 waffle maker that gets stolen three times beats a $25 gift nobody wants. Each gift is also tagged with how fast you can get it:

Budgets are typical US prices, not quotes from any retailer, and they change often. My links go to retailer search results instead of single listings, so you can see what's in stock near you.

Disclosure

I don't currently earn anything from the links on this site. If that changes, this page will say so.

Privacy

The game host stores your game in your own browser (localStorage). Nothing you type into it is sent to me.

I count visits, page views and clicks so I know what's useful. No cookies, no IP addresses, nothing that identifies you.