The Scoop on White Elephant Gift Exchanges

A great way to put a fun and festive spin on your holiday party is to have a white elephant or dirty Santa gift exchange. This is a fun way to spend a half an hour at a party. In the past I have included this idea in my holiday party preparations. I always set a realistic budget for this activity, in my experience I have noticed that many participants are not willing to spend very much cash on an impersonal gift exchange.

At my last holiday party I kept it very real, my guests were informed that we were enforcing a very strict two dollar limit. Why spend twenty dollars on a gift when you don't know who you are shopping for? I was of course met by doubts and comments like "What can you buy for two dollars?" I insisted that if we stuck to the budget and looked for off the wall gifts it would be really fun.

To my surprise, I had quite a turn out and everyone stuck to the budget, except one extravagant friend who tripled the figure and I quote "In the spirit of Christmas!" After drinks and appetizers and plenty of mingling we got down to business and started the gift exchange, my guests were thrilled with the fun gifts everyone managed to find on such a strict budget. There were shot glasses, lottery tickets, GI Joe candies, silly string, candles, dirty dice and so on being stolen left and right.

If you don't know exactly what White Elephant or Dirty Santa is here is the scoop.

Everyone brings a wrapped gift, we draw numbers to determine the order of choosing gifts. After the first person chooses a gift, the next person can pick a different gift, or steal the gifts that are already open. As an example :

Joe has a shot glass, Jean has a candle. Sally chooses to steal the shot glass from Joe, so Joe must take a different gift, either opened or unopened. Then the next person steals or chooses a gift and so on. You can place a limit, such as a gift can only be stolen so many times per round.

White Elephant is very simple and loads of fun. Everyone will have fun with this gift exchange variation. You can set what ever price limitations you prefer, such as a $5 limit, or you could make it a theme exchange, such as a re gifting white elephant party, or a Hawaiian themed white elephant gift exchange.

Another fun idea for a host or hostess of a holiday party is to create a trivia puzzle and offer small prizes for most correct, first one finished and so on.