As close to a Christmas tradition we’ve had the last decade, we watched Con Air in spurts, passing from the kitchen to the den to the beer fridge in the back-laundry room, while my dad laid back in his fold-out leather chair, drinking his iced milk. He’d call us in, waving his hand around like a third-base coach, giddy as each felon went through the normal roll call.
After the movie, my mom invited us into the sprawling living room – one of the only carpeted rooms in the house, it saw little use outside our Christmas mornings or graduation party dinners. The fireplace was a golden red, roaring through the metal grate and causing me to sweat through my t-shirt and shorts when I huddled onto one of the plush couches. Above the flames hung three scarlet ibis paintings my mom bought from a store in Baton Rouge when I was in college. I got her a door sign that said “Bonjour Y’all” the year before from this little antique market, and she had to go by the next time she was in town and see if they had any other witty sayings or noteworthy pieces. The ibises lurk behind hanging gobs of Spanish moss, their feet disappearing in the murky swamp water as they look down on my family in the bursting light of the fire.
It was our first time together since my brother-in-law pulled a gun on my other brother-in-law during my rehearsal dinner. They’ve both subsequently assured me that the event never happened, but much like Santa Claus or the Texas Rangers World Series odds, I still choose to believe. This would be the last Christmas before one of my four siblings needed to find a hotel for either more room or more headspace rather than squeeze everyone in the six-bedroom home we’d grown up in.
My dad sat in the one armchair in the room and pulled up his scrub pants to show us what he’d gotten from my mom – compression socks and Sketcher ShapeUp walking shoes, the kind with the round bottoms that rocked like a porch chair which he demonstrated – then he slunk back in the chair and swirled his ice milk again, directing attention to my mom.
“So, you know,” she said, fidgeting with a row of presents stacked in columns of three, each with a Charlie Brown wrapping paper. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, all of us together like this.”
I could tell she was choking back either genuine remorse or frustration with us all.
“Like this, as a group. Together.”
“We get it, mom, come on,” my sister Leigh said, sipping a glass of wine. Her six kids were down to bed and Leigh didn’t play around with her free time.
“Okay, okay… we haven’t had Christmas all of us together in a long time and who knows the next time we will, so I thought it would be fun to make this one more memorable.” She was straightening the top boxes, perking up their bows as she spoke. “So we’re going to play a game. White Elephant, Dirty Santa – the game you pick a present, open it, then someone can steal it, or you’re stuck with it. And the rule, the rule, is that something can only be stolen twice. Twice, and then it’s that person’s gift. I have enough gifts for everyone to go home with two gifts, so each couple will have four to bring home.”
“You did all this? You picked out all of the gifts?” my brother David asked.
“I did. And your dad.” My dad raised his Houston Astros commemorative stadium cup in the air.
There were some glazed nods of approval, both in apprehension and acceptance that this was going to happen because she’d set it up and we needed to act happy about it no matter how many cat mugs or scarlet ibis coasters were hiding in these boxes.
“Well, thank you, mom,” David said. “Let’s pick the order? Jac likes winning these games.” Jacqueline, David’s wife and one of the top ophthalmology residents in the country, did like winning at things like this, but she hated saying it. David did, too, but there aren’t very many aggressive pediatricians.
As for Melissa and me, we would take the road seldom traveled in this group – the middle road, slightly left of center but never any potholes or friction between us and a sibling or in-law. I once yelled at my youngest sister Mary Claire’s boyfriend, and Melissa did that head bob maneuver from those Real Housewives shows where you know she’s ready to roll if need be, so I was quasi-aware she had my back in White Elephant. But she’d also made the mistake of revealing her high school yearbook superlative was “Best Hair,” so each sibling Secret Santa came with a new hair product in case she hadn’t moved on from high school.
Mary Claire was up first. She jokingly juggled a few small boxes before picking a sensible medium-sized box in deep red wrapping paper, Charlie Brown sitting on the side with a Santa hat. After loosening the tape and unfolding the wrapping paper, careful to save it for next year, she let out a laugh.
“Oh, wow. A… a wine glass that is big enough to hold an entire bottle of wine!”
She flashed the box at the crowd, all of us laughing as Leigh sarcastically clamored for it, simultaneously asking her husband James for a top off on her own glass.
“Someone’s going to steal that for sure,” my mom said.
“Oh, let’s hope so,” Mary Claire said, setting it down on the red rug next to her feet. “I’m not totally sure I can even fly with something like that.”
“I can mail it to you,” my mom said.
“That’s okay,” Mary Claire said.
Next was Melissa. Of the stacks of boxes, there was one that teetered on the edge of collapse, its base box just a hair bigger than the rest. I instructed Mel to go straight for the biggest box. “The best gift is never in the biggest box,” she whispered.
“Who – cares?” I said back. “My mom isn’t trying to trick us. That’s the biggest box because that’s the biggest gift. Get it.”
“Okay,” Melissa shouted over the crowd, “here we go. Nice wrapping paper… well wrapped… it’s big and that’s what Casey said he wanted… so… I’m opening it… and… um.” Her face looked like there was a live muskrat in the bottom of the box, not so much compassion as confusion. Her hand reached in and out came an endless stream of plush burgundy cloth with gold tassels haphazardly coming into view. She stood up and pulled with her knees, grabbing more and more like a magician’s assistant. When she finished, she was like a little bug sitting inside a blossoming rose – if the rose were sickly, possibly over watered, and someone hit it with a streak of gold spray paint.
“What is it?” Melissa asked.
The room was quiet as I reached out to touch it. It was musty on my finger, like it was damp but soft at the same time, like a dog that just dried off after a swim. Or what I imagine a sweating camel feels like. But this was cold, too.
“Mom, what is this?” Katie asked, looking over my shoulder. “Is that…”
“I thought some of you would recognize it, but I guess not.” My mom looked disappointed. “That’s Aunt Dee Dee’s formal duvet.”
“Aunt Dee Dee?” Melissa said, holding it up like she was now caught in a spider web. “How am I supposed to know who that is?”
Aunt Dee Dee was my mom’s great aunt who had a daughter named Claire that ran into a pot of boiling gumbo one day and was scalded so bad that she passed away and my mom decided to name her last daughter after the girl – and the Virgin Mary – so Mary Claire now sat just a few feet away from what was presumably her namesake’s conception garment, if it was a formal night. Years later, Mary Claire would name her daughter Elodie, and when I asked where she found that name, she said: “Well, it’s Aunt Dee Dee’s real name, of course.” Of course, I said.
Katie, the eldest and only one with any memory of Aunt Dee Dee, looked dejected as the rest of us scrambled to develop a strategy.
“Mom,” Katie said. “Why put something like that in this game? You know I’d want that.”
“Then steal it,” my mom said. “It hasn’t been stolen… yet!”
“Is this real?” my brother-in-law Steve, Katie’s husband, asked. Steve was a trauma surgeon and had little time for emotional currency in moments like this.
“Yes,” my mom said, her chin rising to the ceiling.
“And I got a wine glass?” Mary Claire said, kicking the box by her feet.
“Okay, focus, Katie,” Steve said. “We don’t need the comforter. Or we can wait. Melissa doesn’t want that. It’s gross. Nobody wants that. Get gifts out in the open now, then we can steal later. That comforter isn’t the best item, surely. Focus!”
David was quiet. James was coming back in with a glass of wine for Leigh. James, a Harvard Law man, also enjoyed winning games like this but the years of six children (seven today) had softened him. But Leigh was ready, passing on the wine refill.
Mary Claire’s husband Brent took a knee near Mary Claire and developed a communication system. Brent was up next.
“Steal the wine glass, please,” Mary Claire said. “Then I’ll be able to get something else.”
Brent tapped Mary Claire on the shoulder, biting his lip. “No… no, I don’t think I will.” And strode toward the phalanx of wrapping.
He opened part of my mom’s porcelain nativity set she displayed every year. Mary Claire seemed pleased; Katie whimpered behind.
I went next, tearing into the Linus and Lucy paper, revealing the colorful spines of the vintage ChildCraft “How and Why” 1980 Fifteen Volume Encyclopedia set – the same set my dad would sit me on his lap and read to me at night. I learned about animals and folk tales and volcanoes and space. Cinderella and the three little pigs – the Brothers Grimm or someone old’s version, not Walt Disney.
“What the fuck,” I said under my breath, still not wanting my mom to know I knew that word. “No, no, no.”
“Yeahhh, I’ll take that.” David was up and striding across the room. In an instant he snatched the box of books and plopped them next to Jacqueline, who was after David.
“Wait – isn’t it my turn?” I said.
“Yes, but you can’t steal back what’s already been stolen this round,” David said.
“Okay, but if I steal the comforter then Melissa can, hypothetically, steal the books, right? Right?”
“I say only one steal per round,” David said, in a tone only an older brother can muster.
“Mom?” I said, sweeping the room to find her organizing the remaining boxes. “Mom, this is crazy.”
“Oh, no it’s not. Only one steal per round or we’d be here all night. If you want the duvet, get the duvet. It’s not a comforter like you get at Bed Bath and Beyond.”
“You can have the wine glass.”
I walked to the pile and pulled another box. My mom’s old spoon collection. There were over thirty spoons, some older than me, some older than my mom, some from a hot dog vender in the French Quarter.
Jacqueline, at the direction of her husband which I found unbecoming of a top ophthalmology fellow, stole the ChildCraft “How and Why” 1980 Fifteen Volume Encyclopedia set, locking it into their family, which currently lived in London so they wouldn’t even fly back with them anyway.
Katie opened an American Girl doll they’d collected as kids. “I forgot about these,” she said, brushing Samantha or Amanda or Lydia’s hair to the side, a stream of tears now visible across the room.
James went next and grabbed a long, slender box. My dad sat up when James jingled it next to his ear.
“Oh, James, you’ll like that one,” he said. “That’s one of mine. And with all those kids, you’ll probably use it, too. Maybe on yourself.”
James slid his hand in the box and his face went stiff as he slowly pulled out my grandfather’s double barrel shotgun – the one he’d given my dad for his medical school graduation, that my dad figured out was stolen in Mexico after reconfiguring the scratched-out serial numbers. “All right!” James shouted.
“Dad!” David yelled. Steve stomped his foot in excitement, he was up next.
“I’m stealing Dennis’s gun!”
“No!” shouted James.
“Dad!” David continued. “We went hunting together with that gun. Is this like an interactive will?”
My dad was giggling, the type of uncontrolled cackle I only see him do during a funny beer commercial. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Your mom needed stuff for the game!”
James picked again and got a set of four gold-embroidered mint julep cups in desperate need of polish.
“Those were my dad’s,” my mom said. “Look, initials are engraved and a little quote about being a pediatrician. They’re from before World War II. They might’ve been his dad’s.”
“Okay, what the hell, mom,” David said. “I should’ve just been given those cups. This is absurd.”
“David,” James said, “man, you can have these, seriously. I don’t want to take them from you.”
My mom put a stop to any unsanctioned trading in the middle of the game. She reminded us to stick to the rules, and everyone would end up with something special, she was sure of it.
Leigh went next and opened a Sharper Image Epsom salt two-in-one foot bath and massager.
“That’s one of mine, too!” my dad shouted, pounding his knee as Leigh shook her head. “Hell, I’d steal that for real.”
“There are other gag gifts?” Leigh asked.
My mom looked shocked. “Gag gift, Leigh? It’s probably more expensive than anything opened so far except the gun. And the duvet, which is nice.”
“Leigh, you’re up again. We’re going snake order for the next half.”
“I’m not going back-to-back. That’s the worst spot in this game. Mary Claire should go first.”
“I’m not going first again and getting another wine glass. This is still available, by the way.” Mary Claire fumbled to find the box.
Sensing an opportunity to soothe a situation and take the middle road, I nudged Mel.
“Melissa will go. And we can work backwards from her, with MC at the end. How’s that?”
“Well, that’s not exactly fair to Melissa,” my mom said.
“That’s okay, Mrs. Malise,” Mel said, standing to study the gifts. “I won’t listen to Casey this time, and I should be good.” In the hierarchy of in-laws, Mel scored points with my parents early, and she scored often.
She grabbed a box with a sleek bow bobbing on top and slid it off, and after folding back a corner of wrapping, she giggled. “Oh, this is great!”
She went to unwrapping, peeling off the paper to reveal a piece of my mom’s snow village collection, a snow and wreath covered Starbucks Coffee house.
Brent was next and found a box of letters my dad’s mom wrote to my grandfather when he was serving in World War II. Brent looked thrilled.
“The history teacher gets the history heirloom,” my dad said excitedly. Brent was a Spanish teacher. Mary Claire’s old boyfriend, the one I’d yelled at, was a history teacher.
My turn, I was ready to take the gun and force a backroom trade for the encyclopedia set. I knew David couldn’t resist it. But the draw of the box pile called. And I picked a small box, one that rattled like a dog collar.
Inside was my great grandmother’s rosary, silver browning and dull. But the beads shone bright, clearly rubbed violently in deep prayer. Katie whimpered again.
David stole the mint julep cups.
Jacqueline opened a set of diamond earrings that Katie promptly stole, before Leigh stole them a second time, leading Katie to take the rosary, me opening an old gumbo pot which made Aunt Dee Dee’s duvet twitch. Jacqueline ended up with a watch. Katie opened and cried over our Mamere’s – my mom’s mom – handwritten recipe book. Katie owned a workout studio, so I doubt she ever makes much etouffee or blackberry pie, but who knows.
James ended up with a set of Christmas-themed whiskey glasses that he promptly filled with shots for everyone in the room. Steve got some very old baseball cards, and Mary Claire settled on the gift – a photo album from our family vacations to Wyoming. All of us in white Old Navy shirts, riding horseback through the mountain range.
My mom remembered one last gift she forgot to include. “Just a fun one,” she said, signifying it was what we thought as a gag gift. It was a Garfield Christmas tree ornament.
“Mom, I would have thrown a real fit if I’d picked that one.”
“Well, you didn’t. So hush. Everyone’s happy, right? Was this fun?”
We agreed. Some of us quickly inventoried our bounty, Steve taking the shotgun outside with my dad. Katie was on the blue couch in the corner, wiping her eyes.
Again, an opportunity.
We gave her the formal duvet. It was the least we could do.
“I think we’ll do this again. White Elephant was a little more fun than Secret Santa or whatever y’all did before.”
White Elephant, the phrase is said to come from the historic practice of the King of Siam (now Thailand) giving rare albino elephants to courtiers who had displeased him, so that they might be ruined by the animals’ upkeep costs. It signifies an extravagant, impractical gift that cannot be easily disposed of.
A family, so to speak.
