When you picture a white elephant gift exchange, you might imagine lighthearted prank gifts such as an empty toilet paper roll or a coffee mug with a hole at the bottom. That’s because in a modern context, a white elephant gift is any gift that the recipient may consider useless or burdensome, often exchanged in a humorous context. However, the phrase is derived from a time in Southeast Asia when real white elephants were exchanged for insincere reasons.
As the story goes, the phrase comes from Siam (modern-day Thailand), where white elephants were considered rare objects of veneration that fell under ownership of the Siamese king. Given the animal’s elevated status, white elephants were rarely made to perform labor and were instead pampered with food and nonstop care. This treatment might be considered standard in a royal palace, but it would be burdensome for a normal household.
Here enters the cursed blessing of the gift of the white elephant. These pale creatures were gifted to people who had fallen into ill favor with the king. Given the fact that they were so highly honored, the giftee had no choice but to care for the animal. However, doing so would drain them of all their resources, leaving that person in a state of financial ruin (just as the king hoped).
By the 1720s, the literal act of gifting a white elephant gave rise to the figurative phrase. One of its earliest uses appears in a 1721 edition of the London Journal:“In short, Honour and Victory are generally no more than white Elephants.” Today, “white elephant” mainly refers to little tchotchkes and other goofy gifts exchanged among friends for laughs.
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