Christmas Traditions: Our Christmas Gift Exchange

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One of the holiday traditions I enjoy the most is a Christmas gift-giving game I learned. A friend showed this holiday tradition to me and since this time we have used this idea in our Christmas gatherings.

The neat thing about this Christmas gift giving tradition is it can make gift giving more fun and less expensive. Try this at your next family gathering and you will see what I mean.

The first step of this Christmas gift giving tradition is to have everyone purchase a gift (or gifts) under a certain price limit. When I first learned about this tradition, there were no additional rules to purchasing the gift. Our family has since learned it helps to have the gifts labeled. Girls (women) can purchase either a girl gift or a gender-neutral gift and label it For a "woman" or "neutral." Boys (men) can purchase either a manly gift or a gender-neutral gift and label it as "man" or "neutral." If you have a group of kids, you may consider doing a separate game for the kids. We have not done a gift exchange for kids. However, I imagine you would want to make sure the ages of the gifts were appropriate. In addition, we ask people to purchase two or three gifts under the gift limit and place them all in the same gift bag. This allows people to split up the item and trade. Some clever relatives even included single dollar bills.

It is a lot of fun if a few people insert some usable gag gifts.

When Christmas comes, have an order for people to pick out their gift. It could be by age or another order. As people choose the items, ask them not to peak and wait until everyone has selected a bag. This is done to ensure no one gets stuck with their own bag (mystery bags would also help eliminate this possibility as long as the host bags are picked first). Next, go in the same order and ask each person to open their gift so everyone can see it. At the end of the exchange, people are now allowed to trade items. This is where it becomes fun. As people trade the items, you are likely to come away with at least one item you can use. Sometimes it helps to have a mystery bag (one for each sex) people can opt to trade their current bag for this one (before showing others the contents). This allows people to not get stuck with a bag no one else wants. The host would provide the mystery neutral bag or one mystery bag for each gender.

This is a fun game! Please comment to this post with any Christmas gift exchange ideas your family enjoys!