By this point, obviously, it describes the silly presents you bring to pass around at the holiday party. But it draws its roots from a monumentally petty (and almost surely false) legend: kings bestowing actual white elephants on their adversaries as intentionally impractical gifts.Kings of Siam (today, Thailand) were the petty party, so the legend goes. White elephants, a revered animal in parts of East Asia, required constant care and didn’t bring in any money—essentially, the kings hoped to bankrupt the recipients under the veil of generosity.This legend, though, has no basis in Siamese history and seems to have originated in America; nonetheless, in the States, the term “white elephant†came to mean something impractical but indispensable. Gift swap parties—where gue