Learn how to play the White Elephant Game for holiday or Christmas gift giving occasions.
The holidays are a time when friends, family and co-workers gather together to celebrate the season. The White Elephant Game is a great way to give gifts and have a little fun at the same time.
The White Elephant actually has its roots in another holiday gift giving game, but there was no White Elephant gift in the original game. Without the White Elephant there is a possibility that there will be hurt feelings so it’s best to add the White Elephant gift to eliminate the obvious “bad gift” that no one wants.
How to Play the White Elephant Game
- Everyone in the game purchases either a present or a gift certificate. Typically a dollar amount is set in advance, especially when gift certificates will be the gift.
- Then each person playing the game comes up with their White Elephant gift. This gift is meant to be a non-expensive gift that hints at what the actual gift really is without giving it away. Let’s say you had purchased a gift certificate for Ace Hardware, you may want to use an ace playing card as the White Elephant gift.
- Then you need to wrap your White Elephant gift in a way that’s anonymous, i.e. no name tags or signature wrapping techniques. You don’t need to wrap gift cards and if you’re choosing to use regular gifts the wrapping is optional.
- As people arrive at the party, the White Elephant gifts are placed in one centralized location while the “real” gifts are kept with the giver.
- To play the game, put numbers in a hat that correspond to the number of people playing. Each person draws a number.
- Then you begin with number one, who gets to pick their gift from the pile. This gift they unwrap in front of everyone so all involved know what it is and can begin guessing what the actual present will be.
- Person number two gets the option of taking a new gift from the White Elephant pile or stealing the gift that number one has already selected.
- When its person number three’s turn, they can take from the pile or steal the gifts already opened. And so on.
- If a gift is stolen, then the person who is suddenly without gets to pick from the pile or steal a gift from someone else, but they can’t turn around and steal the gift that was just taken from them back. This can go on for a very long time.
- Eventually you will wind through the numbers and everyone has a present and nothing is left in the pile. At this point some people opt to let number one select again since they don’t get that option in the very beginning, but this is optional.
- Once White Elephants are dispersed its time to dole out the original presents.
This is a prefect game for groups of people who gather over the holiday season as it’s a way to give presents, encourage conversation and game playing and it really requires no skill.
The copyright of the article White Elephant Game in Holiday Entertaining is owned by Kristin Abraham. Permission to republish White Elephant Game in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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