Getting together with all your family members may just be the best part of the holidays. Few things make me happier than seeing all my relatives joyously sitting at a single table, eating, drinking and just having plain, good, family fun.
However, there’s one thing that many of us simply can’t find a way to cope with and yes, you guessed it – buying gifts for them. Before you call me heartless for having problems with shopping for my family, let me tell you a couple of things. First of all, buying gifts for every single member of your family tends to get a bit pricey, especially if you (like me) come from a bigger family where the gatherings count more than three dozen people. Yup.
Even if you buy moderately cheap gifts, you will still end up spending a lot of dollars. Secondly, it takes an awful lot of time to find, pick and pack all those gifts. Your sister’s daughter likes these kinds of dolls, her brother likes those kinds of cars, their parents drink wine but only white wine – these are all very important factors you have to take into account. In order to do it properly, you need to devote hours and hours of your time to gift shopping. Not to mention that there are certain family members who are simply bored with the same ritual happening every year. So, why not change things a bit? Why not organize a gift exchange game and let everyone’s imagination run free while taking some stress out of Christmas shopping.
You will also add an entertainment value to your family gatherings and if that sounds good, there are plenty of variations you can choose from. Here are my favorite ones, so feel free to draw inspiration from them.
1. Drawing Names
The most basic variant of a gifting game would be the game of drawing names from a hat, which became popular as more and more people started playing it for Thanksgiving. The point is that you need to put everyone’s name on a piece of paper and then shuffle them in a hat. Afterward, every person needs to take a name and buy a present for the person they get. The price of the gift is usually set at a level that everyone participating in the game can comfortably afford, but it’s often high enough to buy something nicer than the typical gag present.
The point is for everything to remain anonymous, but some have taken to slightly changing the rules. In this particular version of the game, everyone knows who pulled which name from the hat and a wishlist system is used. That way, you can be sure that you will get something you will like, but I think that personal gain should be the least important thing in a game revolving around family gatherings.
Secret Santa is what happens when you take something as simple, basic and straightforward as the name-drawing-in-a-hat game and put a simple twist on it. It’s also one of the most popular types of gift exchanges around, especially since Santa Claus is everybody’s favorite character in the world – who wouldn’t play a game that has his name in it?
The rules of the game are pretty similar to that of the name drawing game, but there’s no way to play it with everybody knowing who drew which name. Instead, participants keep it a secret until the gift is opened while the “Santas” may leave clues for the people they’re buying for. These usually come in the form of poems and bring a much more personal feel to the whole game. After each person opens their gift, they traditionally attempt to guess who their Santa was.
This is a game that’s pretty self-explanatory and it really doesn’t get any more straightforward than this. People are simply required to bring a wrapped gift, which is placed in a bag or hidden from view in some other manner. Then, each participant chooses a gift and their choice is solely based on what the gift looks like or feels on the outside. Finally, people take turns in opening their gifts while everyone else watches.
The people participating are encouraged to contribute to the overall goofiness of the game by making sure to pack their gifts in an unusual way or to purchase intriguingly shaped gifts (I once saw a man who packed an avocado and a hockey stick in a single bag, which bewildered everyone in the room). It's either that or to pack them deceptively for maximum surprise value.
While not essentially a game per se, this is a cool little addition to any game you’re already playing, no matter whether it’s Vanilla White Elephant, Secret Santa or just plain, old name-drawing. You can spice things up by making your gift swap thematic, which literally has thousands of possibilities. Here are some ideas to get you started:
Made in the USA – the point is to support American businesses (or businesses from England, Canada, Australia, wherever you live) instead of buying imported products. Take the game a step further by telling everyone to buy from local businesses.
Pirates – A yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Ok, maybe not rum (it’s a family gathering, after all) but you get the idea. Goofy hats, inflatable shoulder-parrots, eye patches, cutlasses and flintlock pistols, pirate flags, the fun never stops. Recommended for families with a good sense of humor.
Color-themed exchange – make a rule that every gift has to be blue or green or red or whichever color you feel like and check out for yourself just how bizarre it is to see so many presents that all have the same color in one place. It also provides a nice challenge for everyone!
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