Rules to a Gift Exchange
A gift exchange is an ideal social activity at holiday parties or casual get-togethers, especially company parties. Gift exchanges relieve the pressure of having to find the perfect gift for a specific person and generally introduce a few good laughs in the process. Known by many names, including “Yankee swaps,” “Chinese exchanges” and “white elephant exchanges,” the rules are similar no matter what the event is called.
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Invitations
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Guests should be notified as soon as possible that your party will include a gift exchange. They should be informed of the suggested spending amount, the general audience to expect and the gift theme, if there is one. If gifts are to be funny, raunchy or useful, the preference should be made clear. For the best gift exchange, gifts should be physical items and not gift cards.
Upon Arrival
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Each person brings one wrapped gift and places it in the designated exchange pile. The gift should not have any identifying markers on it to give away who brought it. It's a good idea to carry the gift in an unmarked paper bag to keep others from seeing as you walk in.
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The Exchange
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The host decides what order people will go in. He can do this by randomly selecting one person and having people move clockwise thereafter, or choose another method: picking numbers out of a hat, going in order from oldest to youngest, or going in alphabetical (or reverse alphabetical) order by first or last name.
On your turn, select one gift from the pile and unwrap it in front of everyone. You can choose to keep that gift, or "steal" a gift from someone who already went. If you steal a gift, the person you stole from can either take your gift or steal someone else's gift. (However, he cannot steal back the gift that was stolen from him.)
The gift must be kept out in the open for everyone to see until the game is over.
Dead Gifts
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Sometimes one particular gift is popular and is "stolen" on every turn. Since this quickly makes the game less fun, there is an optional rule to declare an item "dead" after it has been stolen three times. A dead item cannot be stolen again.
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References
- Photo Credit Thomas Northcut/Photodisc/Getty Images
