Dirty Santa Rules! (or Rules for Dirty Santa.)

It’s that time of year. A time for families. A time for gift giving. A time for making memories.  And most importantly, a time for the greatest tradition of the Christmas season, the Dirty Santa Gift exhange!  Our family participates in this long standing custom that dates back to the time when one of the wise men brought the gift of myrrh. I mean really, who gives myrrh?  Can you say re-gift???  So in order to properly acquaint my family with the understood protocol for this event, I sent out the following instructions:

Discussion of food, drink and all that really isn’t important at this point.  But, we MUST talk about Dirty Santa protocol. So, here is my autocratic attempt to define the rules as I interpreted them from our Thanksgiving discussion. I’ve included some necessary embellishments. These are also subject to interpretation and change without notice.

1. The theme for the Dirty Santa exchange is “As Seen on TV”.  A portion of the gift(s) you bring to the Dirty Santa exchange MUST contain the official “as seen on TV” logo.   And I take some offense to this whole theme due to the fact that when it was proposed over Thanksgiving dinner it was met with some derisive jeers.  Heck, I’ve been giving “as seen on TV” gifts for years and you all seemed to enjoy them. Remember the home-made Cold Duck kit I gave Mom, Dad & Nana??? (And I was 12 years old at the time. How was I even able to purchase a wine-making kit?)
2. The suggested price range is $30. While I am hesitant to put a price tag on the true meaning of the holiday spirit, this is just a suggestion. Again, going back to statement #1, I haven’t spent more than $30 on a gift for any of you in years and we’ve seemed to do just fine. So, a range of $20 – $50 is certainly acceptable, but if you do spend less, please remove the price tag to avoid embarrassment.  Please note:  Some quality “as seen on TV” gifts are available for much less than $30!!  If so, see next rule regarding supplemental gifts.
3. Supplemental gifts.  If you are of the extremely generous nature, you may be at the wrong party, or not a real family member.  However, if your initial gift just doesn’t seem to say “Dirty Santa”, or if it falls well short of your financial gift-giving goal, you MAY supplement with an additional gift (understood by most as “alcohol”) as long as one of the gifts bear the “as seen on TV” logo.  A gift such as a Cold Duck kit mentioned in #1 above actually and effectively accomplishes both goals.
4. Prohibited gifts.  Any gifts containing the following words, or derivation thereof, are strictly prohibited:  boobies, poop, fart, vomit, antidisestablishmentarianism.  However, apparently, gifts containing the words “Hot Sex” are perfectly acceptable.  Our soon-to-be 80 year old father received some of that at a recent Christmas party and was not ashamed to talk about it.  In fact, he offered me some Hot Sex at our staff Christmas party just last night.  It was one of our more awkward father-son moments in recent memory.  Still, is spite of these rules, boobies remains just a very fun word to say.
5. Eligibility.  All family members, guests and dignitaries present who are currently attending college or have matriculated from such, or are just really old, are eligible to participate. However, you must “pay to play.”  If you don’t bring a gift, you cannot play. If you have not yet reached the legal drinking age and you acquire a gift that contains anything greater than 2% alcohol, the host retains ownership privileges of said gift, unless the underage participant has a written permission slip from participant’s parent.  We recognize that underage drinking in our society is at epidemic levels, and we all take pride in the fact that none of our underage family members have not yet imbibed in such reckless and irresponsible behavior.  Hahahah…I almost had ya’ll going there didn’t I?
6. Order of Play.  TBD – we seem to change these rules every year, so why stop now?

So tell me, how do you take part in this most ancient Christmas tradition?