White Elephant Gifts

Okay guys - my sister in law is wanting to do a Christmas in July party and do white elephant gifts. Here’s the thing. When I was a teenager I went to a youth group Christmas party, everyone was assigned to bring a white elephant gift - the criteria was nothing inappropriate or unkind and keep it under $10 it was more the anonymity of the gift giving than for it to be a joke at least that’s how I understood it. Everyone was to give a gift and everyone was to get a gift. So we are all opening our gifts and all the other girls are getting cute socks and scrunchies, nail polish and bubble bath and then there’s me. I got a diaper. A diaper filled with lemonade and cocoa pops - it absolutely looked like a dirty diaper. One of the leaders felt bad for me after and gave me her crunch bar but the whole experience was just un-fun to me. If we had all brought joke gifts it would have been funny but when literally every other girl got an actual gift it was totally a downer. I’ve never gone to another white elephant gift giving party since. I make any excuse not to be included, but now it’s family. It seems so silly and I know it was years ago but I’m just wondering is this normal for white elephant gift giving? It’s not something I ever did growing up until I moved to the US. I don’t ever want to make anyone feel that way and I really don’t want to ever feel that way. Im fine participating as a joke but then there’s another factor that I know my sister in law plays dirty. She gifted my MiL a onesie for her birthday one year - she let her mom believe she was pregnant and then said ha jokes here’s a gift card. It was awful to watch. Thinking about just bowing out but if I do go - how do I navigate this? It just seems like such a nasty tradition to me.

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