This story first appeared in the December 23 issue of The Trussville Tribune…
There’s no situation more volatile and potentially dangerous to those involved than a roomful of women playing Dirty Santa. I should know. I play Dirty Santa on at least one occasion every Christmas season, and I always do my level best to help matters along – especially when it comes to getting my hands on something I really, really want.
For those of you unfamiliar with Dirty Santa, it’s a takeaway game played at countless Christmas parties every year. Each player brings a wrapped gift and places it in a pile with the other players’ gifts. Then everybody draws numbers to determine their turn.
The game begins when the person with the lowest number chooses a gift and opens it. Each subsequent player can either open a gift from the pile or steal a gift unwrapped by a previous player. If a gift is stolen, the person forced to give it up can either steal a gift from someone else or open a gift from the pile. Whenever the last gift in the pile is opened, the game ends.
Sounds simple, huh? But in reality, it’s usually anything but. In every game, there are always two or three gifts that several people really, really want and will go to any length to acquire. I’ve seen women play tug-of-war over everything from tree ornaments to holiday toilet lid covers, and I once even heard profanities exchanged by two players who had been the best of buddies only ten minutes before – and all for the sake of a matching scarf and glove set from your local discount store.
Friendship be hanged. Dirty Santa is serious stuff.
The funniest Dirty Santa incident I ever saw was when a fellow player finally managed to get her hands on a box of chocolate-covered cherries she’d been eyeballing since the beginning of the game. Bounty secured, she promptly ripped open the package and chowed down on the candy, rendering it instantly unattractive to the other players. Needless to say, nobody tried to steal it from her.
Dirty Santa has rules about stealing and giving up gifts, but try enforcing them with a woman who’s convinced that a pair of gold-trimmed votives are the finishing touch she needs for the decorations on her fireplace mantel. And try wresting that precious set of holiday cheese spreaders from the clutches of a woman hosting a Christmas party in her home three days hence. It ain’t gonna happen, sister.
Being a successful Dirty Santa player requires a fair measure of selfishness and a little bit of heartlessness. It takes quashing any tendencies toward generosity and ignoring anyone who begs you not to steal their gift – even if they say they want to pass it along to their dying grandmother who’s always wanted the very thing you’re striving to possess. Don’t fall for it. It’s a lie.
I can always count on an – ahem – interesting round of Dirty Santa at the annual Christmas party of a ladies’ class I’m affiliated with at church. You’d think a bunch of sweet church ladies would be pushovers in a game that encourages the use of sinful tactics for selfish gain. But that’s far from being the case. With so much practice over the years, they’ve gotten pretty good at being sinful. And along with them, so have I.
Used to be, I was timid about claiming anything I really wanted, allowing my natural inclination to let others have the best gifts prevail. But no more. If I see something I want, I go after it. And if I have to break somebody’s arm in the process, so be it. Consider yourself forewarned.
Come to think of it, maybe a better name for the game would be Violent Santa or Psychotic Santa or Nasty Lowdown Santa. I bet more men would participate if it were changed to one of those.
On the other hand, I can’t imagine guys getting excited enough over snowman doormats or silver metallic billfolds to stage a rumble, so we should probably just leave the name as is. We don’t, after all, want to end up playing Boring Santa.
Somewhere in the Middle 