White Elephant Gift Exchange Rules

Our church group is having our annual last/first Christmas party today and I'm looking for alternate, fun rules for the white elephant gift exchange. There will be about 34 folks, mostly couples in their 50s & 60s, and the gifts tend to be useful and/or funny - nothing dirty or gross. Instead of an "Open and steal" set of rules, I'm thinking of some type of "Open and give" set of rules. Any ideas?

 

If you're interested, here's what I came up with.

Background: About 30 folks participated, all members of an adult Bible fellowship group at church, most have known each other at least 5 years. Last year, we did a standard white elephant and a silly stuffed parrot was stolen many times. This year, I jokingly said we weren't going to trample on the 8th and 10th Commandments, but celebrate the "joy" of giving.

The game: Each player takes a wrapped gift and a number from a hat. The person with #1 starts the first round of the game. Each round consists of players A-D.

- #1 (A) unwraps his/her gift, shows it off, and must decide to whom to give it. A is encouraged to briefly explain why person B deserves this gift.

- B accepts A's gift and unwraps the gift he originally selected. B selects another worthy recipient and presents his original gift to person C with a brief explanation. B cannot give the gift to person A.

- C accepts B's original gift and unwraps the gift he originally selected. C selects someone and presents his original gift to person D with a brief explanation. C cannot give the gift to persons A or B.

- D accepts C's original gift and unwraps the gift he originally selected. D must present his original gift to person A. This ends the round.

The person holding #2 starts the second round, etc. When a player receives a gift, he must pay forward the gift he is holding from his original selection or given to him in a previous round. Each player can have only one gift at the end of each round.

As the game progresses, most all of the gifts become known and players attempt to develop strategy and alliances to push good & bad gifts around the group, but these often backfire. Once the round started by the person holding the highest number is over, the game is complete.

Results: There were lots of laughs as a few really awful gifts were frequently given away, pushed along, or intentionally left with certain players. Some players tried to get gifts back to other players who really liked what they had to give away. As moderator (and inventor) of the game, I attempted to keep count of each round and make sure folks gave away the gift they were holding, not the one they just received. At the end of the game, we all decided that the two worst gifts were some very stinky Avon perfume in an especially ugly bottle and a hideous concrete and crushed glass gazing ball in an old bowling bag. I surprised the final holders of these loser gifts with $10 gift cards from a local big-box store.

Reviews: No one had played anything like it before and everyone claimed to enjoy it. The game took about 90 minutes, which was about right for this group. Shortening the number of people in each round to 3, A-B-C-A, would speed things up. However, adding an extra person to each round would allow the person starting the round to be forced to get back the gift he tried to give away with a possible playing order of A-B-C-D-B-A instead of A-B-C-D-E-A. I think this would require a smaller group to avoid the game running too long.