Materials
A gift from each participant. Each person brings a wrapped unmarked gift. You may choose a cost limit or have them bring a white elephant gift.
How gifts are exchanged
A. Everyone sits in a circle and the gifts are placed in a pile in the middle. Write numbers from 1-??, depending on the number of gifts, on small pieces of paper. Do not number the gifts. Fold the papers and place them in a hat or some other container. Each person randomly picks a paper (number) from the hat.
B. Start with the person holding number “1”. He/she picks a gift and opens it. Then the person holding number “2” can either pick a gift from the pile or take the gift away from number one. If a person has his gift taken away, he may immediately choose an unopened gift from the pile and open it.
C. “3” can either take a gift from numbers 1 or 2 or pick one from the pile to open.
D. There is no limit on the number of gifts one person can open if others continue to take the gift they have opened.
E. Each gift can only change hands three times through out the game. The person with the gift on the third exchange keeps it.
F. Each person ends up with only one gift. A person may end up with the same gift they brought.
Variation
Play the game without opening the gifts till the end when everyone has a gift in hand and all the exchanging is over.
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