Christmas Gift Exchange Ideas

Every Christmas many companies try to figure out what they want to do as far as gift exchange. There are so many different ideas that one can come up with. The only thing is that everybody has to be in agreement when deciding on what to do. If one person doesn't agree it could mess the whole thing up. You also have to make sure that you don't offend anybody that you work with who may not celebrate Christmas. So before choosing what to do ask around for suggestions from all of the employees.

One of the most popular things that most companies to around the Christmas season is play the white elephant game. This is how the game works for some of you who may not know. Each person that wants to participate must bring a wrapped gift. Before the party you should set limitations on the gift such as the gift must cost no more than $20.00. You can set the price how ever you want. Then after everybody arrives for the party everybody sits around and draws numbers. The person who drew number 1 gets to pick the first gift. The person will then unwrap the gift and everybody will admire it. Then the next person will either choose to steal the opened gift or choose an unwrapped one. If the 2nd person steals the first person's gift. Then the first person will have to open a wrapped one. The game will continue until all the gifts have been open. But there are some limitations on how and when you can steal a gift. If a person steals a gift from you, you can not steal the gift right back from them. You have to either steal a gift from somebody else or open a wrapped one. The fourth owner of a gift gets to keep that gift. The gift will now be dead in play. The owners of the live gifts must hold the gift up when requested.

The gift's that you choose to bring for the white elephant game will all depend on who will be at the party. It's funny to see a bunch of women gather around for this type of game and there only be one or two men. It happens all the time. Some people will probably bring gag gifts as a joke. Then some will not. Things that you could bring are bath products if their are a lot of woman who will be there. Wine glasses have also been known to be a favorite for both men and women. A good gag gift would get an old popcorn can and place a gift inside of it and then wrap it. Popcorn cans are the easiest present to figure out and if a person sees that as one of the gifts they aren't going to choose it and then person that ends up with it at the end will have a big surprise waiting on them. Candy is also another good gift to bring because everybody loves chocolate. You could also go out and buy a Christmas coffee cup and put a gift card from starbucks or another coffee shop. Just make sure you put the giftcard inside of a coffee cup and not just have the card. That would be about the only gift card that I would use. Many people drink coffee and would love this gift.

Another good gift exchange game to do the week leading up to Christmas is the secret santa game. A lot of companies put everybody's name in a bowl and then you choose a name. Who's ever name that you picked you get a gift for them and it gets put under the company Christmas Tree. Now I have a little twist to this game that I did one year at a place that I was working at. The boss handed everybody a piece of paper with different questions on it. The questions were like what's your favorite candy, what's your favorite smell, what hobbies to you have and so on. The person fills the piece of paper out, puts their name on it and then tapes it to a wall. We taped ours to the staff bathroom wall. Then everybody drew a name from the hat and through out the day we went and got the person's sheet off of the wall. We did this about a week or two before the week before Christmas.

Now the way the gift exchange works is you have to buy five gifts. One for each day of the week. The last gift will be given out either on Christmas Eve or the day of your Christmas party. However you want to do it. The gifts all together couldn't cost no more than $20.00. Most people didn't even spend that. You look at the list of the person you have a decide on what to get them. The way we did it was we started off with a small gift and then each day the gift would get bigger in size. So say if you had a person who liked M&M's. You could go to the dollar shop and buy a coffee cup or some type of glass and a bag of M&M's. Open the bag of M&M's and place in plastic wrap and tie with a bow and place inside the cup. This could be given out on the first day. Now when you give the gifts remember they aren't supposed to find out who you are. So you have to put the gift somewhere they will see it, but make sure that they don't see you putting it there. Now on the fifth day after everybody has gotten their gift you try to decide who your secret santa was.

Sometimes it's easy to figure out and sometimes it's not. This will let you know how well you know your co-workers. If you would prefer not to let the person know that it was you then you don't have to. It's all up to you. Most of the time the head boss stays out of the game just to be fair to everybody. This way is much easier than having to buy a gift for each and every person in your company. Now if you have a big company you may only want to do the one gift idea, but for smaller ones the one a day for five days is a hit.