Gift exchanges are a total blast at Christmas holiday parties. However, they can also be awkward and a little boring. It all depends on how it’s handled. It’s fun to give gag gifts, but humor is so subjective and you don’t want to offend anybody. Especially if you’re at an office party gift exchange. Then there are the gifts a colleague genuinely gives you without knowing much about you, or what you like. Either giving or receiving a gift always has a potential clinginess to it. How much is too much, or too little to give? How should you react to a bad gift?
Related: Stocking Stuffer Ideas to Help Make Gifting Easier This Holiday Season
Some people just have fun and love the festivities of gift exchanges, but for others, it can be a total nightmare. That’s why as a host, it’s always smart to have a backup plan in the form of some structure. If you turn a gift exchange into a game with rules, it creates a neutral environment where even the most anxious introvert can have fun with the others. My favorite game uses these printable gift exchange cards.
Gift Exchange Cards
When you’ve printed and cut out these gift exchange cards, you’ll have a small deck of instructions that participants can read and respond to. The cards tell each player who to give their gift to. The result is a hilarious shuffle of randomness that gets people together in a not-too-serious way to enjoy the act of holiday gift-giving.
Card Directed Gift Shuffle
Print and play this gift exchange card game by having each player draw a card from the deck and follow the instructions on the card. If one player gives a gift to another as directed, have the recipient draw the next card. The gifts can be all in a pile, or each participant can be carrying a gift at the start of the game.
