Gift exchange games, with the rules for each

A gift exchange game turns a pile of presents into the party. Everyone brings one wrapped gift, and the game decides who goes home with which. The best ones take a sentence to explain and an hour to stop laughing about.

Below are ten of them, each with its full rules. There are stealing games, the dice game and passing games, plus a few gentler ones for children and for anyone who would rather not rob their manager. The left right game comes with a story written for it, ready to read aloud.

Game	Players	How long	Best for
White elephant	6 to 40	30 to 60 minutes	Offices and friends who like a steal
The dice game	4 to 20	About 10 minutes	Families, and a quick round anywhere
The left right game	5 to 30	About 3 minutes	Families, children, a gentle closer
Pass the gift	6 to 30	About 10 minutes	Mixed ages
The plastic wrap ball	4 to 12	About 15 minutes	Small groups and small prizes
Secret Santa	Any	A few weeks, then a reveal	Teams that want one good gift each
The 1901 swap party	6 to 20	About 30 minutes	Friends who like to haggle
The trivia gift grab	6 to 40	About 20 minutes	Offices and quiz fans
Pick and keep	Any	About 10 minutes	Children, and groups that hate stealing
Guess who brought it	6 to 20	About 20 minutes	Teams who know each other well

White elephant, the gift exchange with stealing

Everyone brings one wrapped gift and draws a number. On your turn you open a gift from the pile or steal one somebody has already opened, and a player who is robbed goes again. A gift freezes on its third steal. When the last gift is open, number one may make a final swap, because they went first with nothing to choose from.

The same game is a Yankee swap in New England and dirty Santa in the South. The full rules, a turn-by-turn example, steal limits and the arguments that come up every year are in white elephant rules.

It is the right game for a room of ten to forty that wants some drama. It is the wrong one for young children, who are not ready to have a present taken off them twice in a row.

Gift exchange dice game rules

The dice game comes from Denmark, where it is called pakkeleg, the present game. Aarhus University's economics department describes it as a game most Danes play at Christmas, children as well as adults. Its rules sheet carries a fair warning: it brings out the worst in people.

You need one wrapped gift per player, one die, and a timer that only the host can see.

Round one: roll for the pile. Put every gift in the middle and sit in a circle. Take turns rolling the die. Roll a six and you take a wrapped gift from the pile. Once you hold a gift, pass the die straight on when it reaches you. The round ends when the pile is empty.

Round two: roll against the clock. The host sets a timer of about five minutes and tells nobody how long it is. Roll in turn, and do what the die says:

Roll	What happens
1	Swap gifts with the player on your left.
2	Swap gifts with the player on your right.
3	Everyone passes their gift one seat to the left.
4	Everyone passes their gift one seat to the right.
5	Nothing happens. The next player rolls.
6	Swap gifts with anyone you choose.

When the timer goes off, stop. Everyone unwraps whatever is in their hands. Nobody opens anything before then, which is what keeps the swapping blind and the timer cruel.

The Danish original is simpler and harsher. In round two a six simply steals a gift, so some players end up holding several and others none. At one student party in Aarhus, the game master chose a reasonable time limit, unknown to everyone else. That works when everyone brings two or three small gifts. With one gift each, the swaps above make sure everybody goes home with something.

For a big room, skip round one. With twenty people, waiting for sixes takes longer than the game. Hand out the gifts at random, start the clock, and roll on a big screen so the whole room sees every roll at once.

The same game also goes by the white elephant dice game and the dirty Santa dice game. For a variation, let a five unwrap your gift instead of doing nothing, so the swaps get less blind as the clock runs down.

The left right Christmas gift game, with a story to read aloud

Everyone sits in a circle holding one wrapped gift. One person reads a story aloud, and every time the story says "left", everyone passes the gift in their hands one person to the left. Every "right" passes it one person to the right. When the reader says "The end", everyone opens the gift they are holding.

It counts the word, not the meaning. "He left the house" is a pass to the left, and "That's right" is a pass to the right. That is the whole joke.

Three tips for the reader:

• Read slowly and pause on every pass. A circle of twenty takes a second or two to move, and a reader who rushes leaves gifts piled in one lap.
• Stress the words a little. Not so much that the story becomes a list, but enough that nobody misses one.
• Read from outside the circle. A reader in the circle has to pass as well, which is hard with the story in one hand. Put the reader's gift on a chair in their place.

The story below was written for this game. It has seventeen lefts and fourteen rights, so if everyone passed in perfect time, every gift would end three seats to the left of where it started. Nobody passes in perfect time. It takes about three minutes to read aloud.

Uncle Ray's shortcut

Every Christmas Eve, the Penny family drove to Grandma Rose's house for dinner. And every Christmas Eve, Uncle Ray swore he knew a shortcut.

"Turn left at the gas station," he said, before they had even left the driveway.

Aunt June turned left. "Are you sure this is right?"

"I'm always right," said Uncle Ray. "Take the next right, then a quick left at the frozen pond."

She took the right, then the left, and the road turned to gravel. The frozen pond was not frozen. It was not a pond. It was a car wash.

"Right," said Uncle Ray. "Back out and turn left. No, your other left."

The twins in the back seat started counting the turns. By the church they had counted twenty, and nobody knew which way was left.

Outside the bakery, Aunt June stopped the car. "Ray," she said. "Where is Grandma's pie?"

Uncle Ray went very quiet. "I left it on the kitchen counter," he said. "Next to the map."

So they turned right around. Right, left, left, right, all the way home, where the pie sat on the counter, right where he had left it.

By the time they reached Grandma Rose's street, snow was falling. Every house on the left had its lights on. Every house on the right was dark, except one.

"That one, on the right," said the twins. "With the wreath."

Grandma Rose opened the door before they could knock, a tea towel over her left shoulder. "You're late," she said. "Did Ray take his shortcut?"

"He did," said Aunt June. "We turned left so many times that we ended up right back where we started."

Grandma laughed and took the pie. "Then come in, all of you. There's plenty of dinner left, and the fire is just right."

So the Pennys sat down at last, with nothing left to worry about. Uncle Ray even offered to drive everyone home.

Everyone said no, right away.

The end.

Uneven counts are the point. A story with as many rights as lefts moves every gift round the circle and back to where it began. For a second round, have everyone stand up and change seats, then read it again.

Pass the gift game

There are two games under this name, and both work at a Christmas party.

The layered parcel. This is the British pass the parcel. Wikipedia describes a prize wrapped in a large number of layers, passed round while music plays. Whoever holds it when the music stops removes one layer, and the game goes on until the last layer comes off. Tuck a sweet or a small forfeit between the layers so every stop pays out, and keep the main prize in the middle. The person stopping the music should face away from the circle, or children will notice who keeps winning.

Pass the gift with prompts. Everyone holds a wrapped gift. The host reads one line at a time, and anyone the line describes passes their gift the way it says. Use these, or write your own about your group:

• If you have a pet, pass your gift to the right.
• If you have ever burned a batch of cookies, pass your gift to the left.
• If you are wearing patterned socks, swap with someone across the room.
• If you have finished your holiday shopping, pass two seats to the left.
• If you have been on a plane this year, pass to the right.
• If you sang in the car this week, pass to the left.
• If you are the youngest child in your family, swap with the oldest person here.
• If you have ever regifted something, pass to the right. Be honest.
• If you own a holiday sweater you would not wear in public, pass to the left.
• If you are holding the gift you brought, swap with anyone you like.
• Everyone, open the gift in your hands.

The prompts are the fun part, so make the last few about the room itself: the person who organised the party, whoever travelled furthest, the newest person on the team.

The plastic wrap ball game

This one needs some setting up and pays it back. Wrap a pile of small prizes, such as sweets, gift cards, lip balm and novelty erasers, into one big ball of plastic wrap. Add the prizes one at a time and wind several layers between each, so they come out slowly.

1. Sit in a circle. The first player holds the ball, and the player on their left holds two dice.
2. Unwrap while they roll. The first player unwraps as fast as they can, keeping every prize that falls out. Meanwhile the player on their left rolls both dice, again and again.
3. Doubles pass the ball. When the roller throws a double, they take the ball and start unwrapping, and the dice move one more seat to the left.
4. Play until the ball is gone. The last prize, in the very middle, should be the best one.

For a harder version, the unwrapper wears oven gloves. For a gentler one with children, any roll that totals seven passes the ball too, so nobody waits long.

Secret Santa, and the draw that keeps it secret

Secret Santa is not a party game so much as a draw. Wikipedia describes it as a tradition in which members of a group are randomly assigned a person to whom they give a gift. Each person buys one good gift for one named person, and the giver stays secret until the reveal.

1. Draw names a few weeks ahead. Everyone writes their name on a slip, and everyone draws one. Anyone who draws their own name puts it back and draws again.
2. Set a price limit and a date. Put both in writing to the whole group.
3. Buy for your person. Ask around if you need to, quietly.
4. Swap on the day. Gifts go into one pile, labelled with the recipient's name and nothing else. Open them together, and let each person guess who drew them before the giver owns up.

The draw is the part that goes wrong. Do it in private, by slips or by a draw site that emails each person their name. Do not draw Secret Santa on a big screen or a shared wheel: everyone would see who has whom, and the secret is the point.

The 1901 swap party

This is the oldest game here, and it deserves a comeback. In January 1901, The Hartford Herald in Kentucky described a "swap party". Each guest had four or five little bundles, wrapped so nobody could guess the contents. Everyone praised their own bundles without saying what was in them, and swapped with a great show of bargaining. The guest who made the poorest swap had to tell a story or suggest a game.

To play it now:

1. Everyone brings three small wrapped bundles, each worth almost nothing. A tea bag, a pencil and a single sock are ideal.
2. Trade for ten minutes. One bundle for one bundle, by agreement only. Describe yours as glowingly as you can without saying what it is. Misleading is allowed, and lying outright is not.
3. Open everything. The room votes for the best bargain and the worst swap.
4. The worst swap entertains the room. A story, a song or a game, exactly as in 1901.

It works best with a group that likes talking, and it costs nobody more than a few coins.

The trivia gift grab

Let a quiz decide the order. Run ten Christmas questions, and whoever tops the scores picks a wrapped gift first, then second place, and so on down the table. Gifts stay closed until everyone has chosen, then open together.

A quiz on phones keeps the scoring honest and the room in one place. Decka's live quiz shows a leaderboard after each question, so the order is settled the moment the last answer lands. For questions that a whole room can answer, start with trivia questions.

For a twist, let the winner choose between picking first and stealing last. The quiz then pays out twice: once in points, and once in the argument about which is better.

Pick and keep, the no-stealing exchange

Draw numbers, and in number order each person picks a wrapped gift and opens it. Nobody steals. When everyone has opened, anyone who wants to swap may trade by agreement, and nobody has to.

It is the right game for young children, and for a group where somebody would genuinely mind losing a gift. It also suits an office that would rather not watch the director steal the intern's candle. Ten people take about ten minutes.

Guess who brought it

Play any exchange, with one extra rule: every time a gift is opened, the room guesses who brought it before the giver owns up. A correct guess scores a point. At the end, whoever scored most chooses one gift to swap for theirs.

It works best with people who know each other well, because the guessing is about taste: who would buy a book about lighthouses, and who would wrap a single potato. Keep the giver's identity off the tag, and ask the giver to keep a straight face.

Gift exchange traditions

Group gift exchanges are old, and the same idea turns up under different names from Ireland to Denmark to Brazil.

Secret Santa goes by many names. Wikipedia lists it as Kris Kindle or Kris Kringel in Ireland, Wichteln or Julklapp in Germany and amigo secreto in Brazil. Kris Kringle comes from the Austrian gift-bringer Christkindl, whose name means the Christ Child.

Denmark plays the present game at Christmas parties. One is the julefrokost. An Aarhus University student blog explains that the word translates literally to "Christmas lunch", though it is usually an evening party in the weeks before Christmas.

America's version began as the swap party. Peter Jensen Brown, who traced the American game through old newspapers, dates the swap party to at least 1901. The name white elephant arrived in a newspaper joke six years later. How the game got its three names, and what the elephant has to do with it, is in white elephant rules.

Running a gift exchange game on a big screen

Several of these games play better on a big screen. Decka's Spin the Wheel works as the die for the dice game. Choose "My list" under "Options come from", type the six faces, leave "Remove each result" unticked, and spin once for each player round the circle. A wheel on the projector beats a die on the coffee table: everybody sees the roll at the same moment, and nobody argues about whether it landed on a four.

The same wheel draws white elephant numbers from names typed on phones, which is in white elephant rules. For the trivia gift grab, the live quiz keeps the leaderboard. The left right game needs nothing but the story, and the left right template on this page puts it on slides so the reader can read from the screen.