The first person opens a wrapped gift and ends the shift. In the following shifts, each person has the option to open a new gift or steal someone else's gift. When a person's gift is stolen, that person can choose another wrapped gift to open or can steal from another player. Everyone brings a wrapped gift and gets a number.
The first person chooses a gift and unwraps it, the second person can steal that gift or choose another one, and so on. If you're going to do a gift exchange with Secret Santa, you can have your gift delivered directly to the office in time for the gift exchange. Anyone whose gift is stolen this way can do the same thing: choose a new gift or steal it from someone else. Start the gift with a person who needs to pass it on to someone who matches the description of their line in the poem.
You can configure it so that everyone has a particular person to give a personalized gift to, or so that each one makes a universal item that can be given to anyone. If a person has a gift but wants to exchange it, they should choose a number for a guest who hasn't opened a gift yet and take what they want. The following players can choose between choosing a gift wrapped from the pool or stealing a gift from a previous player. Learn more about how you can bring the white elephant to your Christmas party room and change the gift-giving process in a fun way with the White Elephant gift exchange.
The first person to go opens the gift they chose and the next person has the option of stealing the gift from the previous person (in which case that person would have to choose another one) or select a new one. I loved the twist you put on the white elephant gift game, where players draw cards to find out what they're doing with their gift. In a Meet and Gift-style gift exchange, each person will be paired with the same person who drew it. Strange artworks and gadgets are also popular at Christmas gift exchanges and are often in high demand.
While this fun Christmas gift exchange game has other names, such as Dirty Santa and Yankee Swap, White Elephant seems to be the most popular. This game is played like any normal gift exchange, with one exception: everyone receives a character card at the beginning of the game, characters inspired by A Christmas Carol.
