Gift exchange game for holiday parties?!
Gift exchange game for holiday parties?
Answers:
White elephant/Chinese auction/Dirty Santa/Yankee Swap/whatever you wanna call it is fun, *if* there are some good gifts "in contention" AND if people are willing to steal gifts instead of opening new ones. There's nothing more boring than sitting there watching people open yet another dollar-store Santa figurine because they were too polite to play the game properly. For this reason, I prefer the game with no limits on stealing (well, other than "no stealing back the item which was just stolen from you", but that should be obvious). The reason people sometimes use limits is to shorten the amount of time the game takes, which I suppose is an important consideration at, say, the office lunchtime holiday party.
Source(s):
There's a good summary of the rules on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/white_eleph...
white elephant. fun and changes things up :)
have each person bring a gift and then play spin the bottle, when you get a gift you get out of the circle so each person gets a gift.
really fun-- you can kiss if you want, when i was not married we hung misteltoe in the center of the circle. it was silly fun. :)
White Elephant. Everyone brings a gift. Draw numbers. 1st person grabs a gift. 2nd person can either steal the first gift or grab another. Each gift can be stolen only 3 times, and the 3rd person to steal it gets to keep it. Fun, because people kind of get a choice.
The DIRTY Santa gift exchange is always popular at my parties. This link tells you the rules....
Set a price limit and then tell each person to bring a gift they would like to have themselves - that way the guys tend to bring guy gifts and gals tend to bring gal gifts. Give them all monopoly money and then have an 'auction' for the the presents.
number attendees 1-? and put in hat. after they pull their numbers, starting at #1 each person chooses a gift in order of their number. at the end of the draw everyone should have a gift. the starting back with who ever pulled #1 that person may choose to switch gifts with anyone they want. the whoever pulled #2 does the same. then so on and so on until every # has been able to exchange. now noone has the gift they started with but are now stuck with what they've been exchanged.
so..
draw #s
pick gifts in # order
swap gifts in number order
then everone unwrap!!!!!
White elephant is always fun and it doesn't blow the bank for people, as you normally keep the gift under $10. Ask everyone to try and keep the gifts fun/funny, but not offensive (one year at our party someone wrapped an enema, which didn't turn out to be too funny because someone was stuck with a really lame gift and felt a little cheated). Everyone wraps their present, but does not place a name on it. They are all placed under the tree (or some other central location if you don't have a tree). Create enough squares with numbers on them for everyone in your office to get one. When the time comes, every person draws a number from a hat (or some other receptacle). You then start with #1. They get to pick a present first. They open their present in front of everyone , so that people can oooh, aahh or chuckle at the gift. You then go down the line numerically (2, 3, 4, etc...), with each person that follows getting the option of opening a gift from under the tree or taking someone else's already opened gift. If they choose to take someone else's gift, the person they take it from then gets to pick another present from under the tree to open. Each opened gift can only be "snatched" twice and then it is out of play. Finally, when everyone has opened a gift, #1 gets to decide to keep their gift or they can exchange it for anyone else's (because they didn't get the option to exchange gifts with someone else since they went first). This game is sure to be full of laughs...we have always enjoyed it at our parties!
I have a version of White Elephant that is fun...
Everyone brings a gift or multiple gifts (set a limit $10 or whatever) THe gifts should all be wrapped and located in the center of the game circle. With 2 dice everyone will roll if you get a 7 or 11 you can pick a prize from the pot. If you get doubles you can roll again. Once all the prizes are taken set a timer for 5 min. Do the rolling of the dice again. But you can steal gifts from other people.
The Chinese game
Everyone bring a present, the first one pick any present, then the next person either pick the present that the first person have, if she/he likes it or pick a wrap present, at the end will be one wrap gift and the person that don't have a gift get the present and she can still exchange the gift with any other person.
It can be white elephant. Have everyone bring a wrapped present. Everyone sits in a circle holding a present. You play some music and everyone passes the gifts until the music stops. Whatever gift they have is the gift they will open.