The Left-Right White Elephant Game

You may have had a chance to play many gift-sharing games, but I’ve yet to find one that’s as interesting and smooth as the White Elephant game, especially since it comes with so many neat variations to the default set of rules.

Today, I’ll focus on the Left-Right White Elephant game variation. Before you do anything, make sure to let all the participants know that whenever they hear the words “right,” “left” or “gift” in the story, something will happen in the game. It’s a unique variation that involves tons of swapping and passing around of the gifts that circle in the game. While it might seem complicated at first, you’ll get the hang of it in no time.

Here are the rules:

1. As usual, start the White Elephant party with all the gifts placed in the middle of the room. The players should sit around the pile. Then put the name of every player into the name-drawing hat. Once you draw the name of the first person to pick a gift, return the name back into the hat. This is done so that they could be re-drawn again.
2. Have the storyteller begin reading the story of “Lefty the White Elephant.” When ''Lefty'' is mentioned for the first time, the first gift is moved one person to the left. The storyteller continues until the next mention of left or right, with the gift moving accordingly.
3. The first time the word “gift” is mentioned, another name is drawn from the hat. The player then has the option of stealing the opened gift or opening one of the unwrapped gifts in the middle of the room (all opened gifts have to be clearly displayed to every player). When a gift is stolen from a player, they can then open a replacement gift or steal another opened gift from another player.
4. Once the story is finished, everyone should have a gift in their hands. Note that ''Lefty the White Elephant'' has the word “gift” listed a total of 16 times. Since the stealing and opening are completely random, you might actually have to read the story a few times to get all the gifts opened. If you open all the gifts before the story ends, keep reading and pass gifts until the story’s finished.

This is a fantastic and wacky White Elephant variant and an additional way of sharing the gift-giving fun with family and friends.