meaganola
Uh Huh Her
My office's white elephant exchange was how I got rid of my white tea bath salts (plus the PopSugar yoga dvd and a bottle of Three-Buck Chuck)! I think it's sometimes called things like Yankee Swap or Dirty Santa. Basically, everyone who wants to participate brings a wrapped gift. There's usually a dollar limit placed on the exchange if you want to buy something, but just using something you already have is encouraged. Sometimes reusing /regifting something you already have is required (it just depends on the group of people and whether everyone has random junk they want to give away). Even better is if you have the same group of people and end up with something -- one group of my friends had a phenomenally ugly sculpture, and my office has a cribbage board -- that reappears year after year. Whether it's a new purchase or something reused, the tackier, the better.
Anyway. Everyone brings a wrapped present. Then everyone draws numbers and the first person picks out and opens a present from the wrapped things. Here's where it gets fun: The next person in numerical order can either take that person's unwrapped present or "steal" something that's already wrapped (tip: If you're playing this in your office and your boss has a garden gnome representing her favorite sports team, DO NOT STEAL HER GNOME, especially if there are reviews/raises/bonuses in the near future). If they take the unwrapped present, the person who had the present taken away gets to pick a new present. Then the third person gets to pick from either of the unwrapped presents or any of the wrapped presents, and it continues in that vein until you reach the end of the people, and then the person who picked first gets to pick from all of the unwrapped presents. Some groups use the rule that this sets off a chain reaction of stealing until someone decides to keep whatever they have, and some groups use the rule that the first person's pick-from-all-unwrapped-items ends it. There's also usually a rule that states that an item can only be stolen three times, just so everyone doesn't steal the same thing over and over and *over*. That gets boring (and long) *really* quickly.
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