The Craziest Christmas Party Game - The Mad Santa Gift Exchange

A few years ago, my friends realized that our group had grown to an enormous size. While some of us could afford to consider buying Christmas gifts for everyone in the group, most of the people involved were college students, whose budget did not allow that sort of generosity. So the idea of the Mad Santa gift exchange was introduced.

The basic premise of this combination of a gift exchange and a party game is fairly simple. Everyone who wants to participate brings a wrapped gift that falls within a certain price range - $10-20 is usually a good range, though it can be scaled lower or higher depending on the group in question. All of the Mad Santa gifts are placed in a pile, and all participants are then randomly assigned numbers. Depending on the number of participants, you can do this in a number of ways. One year, we had few enough people playing that we could simply all draw cards from a single suit; last year we had 20 people playing, so we wrote out numbers on paper and drew those instead.

Then the madness begins. The person who was unfortunate enough to draw the lowest number chooses a gift out of the pile, and unwraps it. Then the second person has the option of either taking the first person's already unwrapped gift, or unwrapping a new present of their own. If someone's already unwrapped gift is taken from them, they have the option of taking someone else's already unwrapped gift, or returning to the pile for a new gift. This proceeds until all of the numbers have come up, all the presents have been unwrapped, and all of the stealing has been completed. Our group has added a house rule to this game, stating that in any given "round" of action, you can only have a gift stolen from you once - once someone has taken whatever you had at the beginning of the round, the next thing you pick up is yours till the next round.

This game is very likely to get pretty heated, especially when the gifts purchased are geared towards the group in question. Last Christmas, my contribution to the Mad Santa gift exchange was a handmade fleece Batman pillow and a matching pillowcase - a hotly contested item in a group of comic book fans. Even with several bottles of good alcohol in the mix, that pillow and pillowcase set exchanged hands more than any other gift from the pile. No one actually got hurt in the insanity, but there were several people stating "oh, you better not take my stuff." Personally, I managed to land a bottle of sour apple Pucker towards the middle of the festivities, and stayed quiet enough throughout the game that it remained mine till the end. In our group of friends, we are always guaranteed to have at least a couple of bottles of alcohol, a few comic book or gaming related items, movies, gift cards, and a very random assortment of other things.

It is probably important to lay at least one additional ground rule for this year - no crappy gifts. Last year, one of the participants, in an attempt to be clever, bought a large bag of charcoal, and dumped it into a giant black garbage bag, which was then placed in several other garbage bags. No one had any clue what it was. The first person to open a gift simply couldn't resist this large black bag of mystery, which made such interesting sounds when lifted. He was stuck with the bag of charcoal for the entire game. Luckily, in the spirit of the holidays, someone else gave him their gift, and the pillow and pillowcase set that I had contributed was then shared between the winner of the set and the generous soul who was willing to give up his own gift to the person who got the charcoal.

I do know that last year, someone ended up with a VERY bad movie: Sleepy Hollow High. My only hope is that if this movie resurfaces in this year's Mad Santa gift exchange, that I will be lucky enough to avoid it. I think the Mad Santa gift exchange may be one of the few places where "re-gifting" is not completely frowned upon.