Roberta Jeeves, Author at White Elephant Rules

Share and Share Alike: All About the Favorite Things Party

Getting together with friends, sharing good food and wine, exchanging little gifts… these are a few of my favorite things. If they sound good to you, too, then you’re sure to enjoy a Favorite Things party. It’s a great alternative to White Elephant, and one that can be held at any time of year.

Whereas a typical gift swap is driven by competition (albeit lighthearted competition), a Favorite Things gift exchange is all about sharing. Participants bring multiples of an item that they love, and award them to others via name drawing. The number of gifts is usually either three or five – in fact, you may have heard this type of gift exchange referred to as a “Five Favorite Things party.”

Like Christmas sock exchanges, Favorite Things parties typically work best with all-female groups. But hey, there’s nothing that says guys can’t be included. It just might be a little harder for everyone to find unisex gifts.

Favorite Things Party Rules

As with every type of gift exchange, the rules of a Favorite Things party aren’t exactly set in stone. Different people play it differently, and you can easily modify things to suit your preferences. Here’s the broad outline:

1. Each person brings multiples of the same item. The price range for the item should be spelled out in the party invitation.

2. Each person writes their name on a number of slips of paper equaling the number gifts they brought (again, usually three or five). These slips of paper go into a pot.

3. Each person takes turns showing off the item they brought. That person then draws names to determine who gets the item, removing those names from the pot as they go. If the gift-giver draws their own name or the same name twice, a re-draw is in order and that slip of paper goes back in the pot.

Note: This is where the variations really come into effect. There are lots of different ways to award the gifts, including having people pick what they want themselves.

4. Once all the gifts have been doled out, the exchange is over. However, organizers may want to allot some time for people to compare and trade items. In fact, it’s highly recommended.

Favorite Things Gift Ideas

The beauty of a Favorite Things party is that it draws people together. You learn something about what other people like, and often find out that you have things in common that you didn’t suspect. Therefore, the type of items you bring to this sort of gift exchange should reflect your own personality and tastes.

Of course, the price range of the item – $10, $20, or whatever – really limits your choices. Here are some options to consider:

A novelty glass or coffee mug that is “so you”
Lipstick, lip gloss, or other beauty products
An unusual type of candy or cookie that others may not know about
A bottle of wine and/or a novelty wine glass

Obviously, there’s a lot of overlap here with popular White Elephant gifts. The main difference is that, for this type of gift swap, you typically don’t bring gag items that don’t have any real value. Remember the name of the game – it’s all about sharing a few of your favorite things with your friends.

Christmas Sock Exchanges: Rules, Gift Ideas, and More

Holiday party planners are always trying to jazz up their gift exchanges with new rules and creative themes. However, there’s only one type of gift swap to consider if you really want to knock everyone’s socks off. I’m talking, of course, about the fun and fashionable Christmas sock exchange.

The idea behind a sock exchange is simple: Each person brings a new pair of socks filled with goodies, and receives a pair from someone else. Exactly how the socks are exchanged is flexible. Participants can simply pull a pair of socks out of a grab bag, but more commonly, a sock exchange works as a slight variation of White Elephant.

Christmas Sock Exchange Rules

Here are some standard rules for a White Elephant-style sock exchange. As always, feel free to modify these guidelines for your own holiday get-together.

1. Each person brings a new pair of socks containing one or more small gifts. The maximum cost of the sock/gift combos should be set and communicated in advance.

2. The socks all go into a centrally located pile.

3. Draw names or have people draw numbers to determine order. Tip: Name drawing is often better for small groups, as it creates more drama about who gets the advantage of going last.

4. Each person chooses a sock from the pile and shows everyone the contents*, or steals a previously chosen sock from someone else. If someone has their sock stolen, they may select a new pair of socks from the pile. For more details on swapping mechanics, see the White Elephant rules page.

* Alternatively, you may want to have everyone open their socks at the very end. This ensures that the socks and their contents don’t get separated, which would make swapping messy.

5. When everyone has had a turn and all the socks have been picked, the game is over and people get to keep the socks they have.

Although perhaps not a rule, people should be encouraged to change into their new socks for the remainder of the party. That’s assuming, of course, that the gift exchange is being held in someone’s home or another sock-friendly environment.

Sock Exchange Gift Ideas

The unique thing about a sock exchange is that each gift has at least two components: the socks themselves, and the presents inside. One idea is to pair cute socks with a funny gag gift inside. Of course, you can also do the reverse, putting useful little items inside tacky socks.

Picking out the socks is usually fun, but finding stocking stuffers to put inside can be a challenge. Not only do you have limited space, but you may not have a lot of money to work with depending on the price limit. Here are a few ideas:

Gift card to a coffee shop
Candy or other goodies
Lotions, soap, etc.
Socks (socks inside socks – how’s that for a twist?)

Some items on this list of White Elephant gift ideas might also do the trick. As with any gift swap, the best gifts are often the ones that are cute, festive, funny, and/or unusual. If you can find something that fits that description and fits inside a sock, you’re in luck.

24 Christmas Icebreaker Questions (With Printable)

Remember those school dances where the boys and girls were too shy to mingle and ended up staring at each other from across the room while the music played? That’s pretty much the last thing you want for your Christmas party.

Okay, maybe you’re not planning any actual dancing at your event, and most of the people in attendance will be supposedly self-assured adults. Nevertheless, the basic problem is real, even if the details differ. The bottom line is that people often need some gentle encouragement to let down their guards at a social gathering.

This is where icebreakers come in. Icebreakers are group activities that help everyone relax and get to know each other better. You’ve probably participated in one of these before, whether it was for school, work, church, or some other group.

Because some people dread icebreakers, it’s often best to keep it simple and non-threatening. Asking people to answer a “get-to-know-you” question about themselves is about as easy as it gets. So, to help melt away the awkwardness at your next holiday gathering, I’ve come up with these fun Christmas icebreaker questions.

About the Printable: If you like these questions, feel free to download and use this printable for your holiday party. Simply cut along the lines and toss the questions into a hat for people to draw.

What’s the best – or worst – Christmas present you’ve ever received?
Describe a Christmas present you wanted badly as a kid, but never received.
Name something about Christmas that most people like, but you hate (or at least dislike).
If you could only have one type of Christmas candy this year, what would you choose?
What holiday movie or special do you watch over and over again?
What’s the weirdest/ugliest Christmas decoration you’ve ever owned?
What was Christmas like when you were growing up?
Who is the toughest person you have to buy for this Christmas?
What one thing are you most grateful for this holiday season?
Share one vivid Christmas memory, good or bad.
What’s your favorite – or least favorite – Christmas song?
If you could travel anywhere for Christmas, where would you go?
What’s the most memorable thing that’s happened to you since last Christmas?
What’s your least favorite item on your Christmas to-do list?
Would you rather have three feet of snow for Christmas, or no snow at all?
If someone offered you a gift card to any store you wanted, which one would you choose?
What’s your favorite holiday? Least favorite?
What’s your favorite character from a Christmas-themed movie, book, or TV special?
What’s the best gift you’ve ever given someone?
If you were Santa Claus, what type of cookie would you want to be left out for you on Christmas Eve?
Name three words that best describe Christmas for you.
Describe a funny Christmas card you have given or received.
Would you rather build a snowman, go sledding, have a snowball fight, or stay inside drinking hot cocoa?
The true meaning of Christmas is [fill in the blank].

You know what else works well as an icebreaker? A gift exchange, of course! For small-to-medium-sized groups, a standard game of White Elephant is ideal. However, a gift exchange can work for larger groups as well.

The Office Gift Exchange: 4 Work-able Ideas

Thinking hard about your office gift exchange? You should be. Planning a gift exchange is never simple, but when it’s for a work party, things can get especially tricky.

A gift swap among coworkers is worthwhile for many reasons, but there’s no doubt that it comes with its own special challenges. Here are some office gift exchange ideas that minimize the potential pitfalls while maximizing the fun for everyone involved.

1. Simplified White Elephant

Let’s deal with the white elephant in the room first, shall we? White Elephant is one of the most popular types of gift exchange, but the vanilla version of the rules might not be ideal for an office party. That’s because office parties typically feature larger groups and tighter schedules, making it hard to fit in all those gift-stealing shenanigans.

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to speed up a White Elephant gift exchange. The most obvious is to set rules on the amount of stealing per turn. A more extreme option is to have participants swap unopened gifts, which takes some of the fun out of stealing, but saves all that time-consuming unwrapping for the end.

2. Secret Santa

Most people are familiar with Secret Santa, and those who aren’t can learn pretty quickly. Participants simply draw the name of another participant and secretly buy one or more presents for that person. As a grand finale, everyone attempts to guess who their Secret Santa was.

This works especially well for a tight-knit group of coworkers, and might still be appropriate for gatherings where everyone knows each other at least somewhat well. However, in groups that aren’t as close, it might be an awkward fit. Some employees might be turned off by the idea of buying a gift for someone they don’t know (or worse, someone they don’t like!).

If you do go with Secret Santa, keep things simple by having participants buy one gift rather than multiples. If time is an issue, you can have everyone open their gifts at the same time and guess their Secret Santa by writing a name down on a card. Then everyone can mingle and find out if they guessed right.

3. Grab Bag

If you want your office gift exchange to be as simple as possible, you probably can’t do better than a grab bag. Everyone brings a gift. They go in a bag. Everyone picks a gift from the bag. Boom, you’re done.

Of course, using an actual bag could be unwieldy, especially if you have bigger gifts and/or a lot of participants. In this case, you may want to assign a number to each gift as it’s dropped off, then have people draw a number from a hat. Whether people open their gifts one at a time or all at once is up to you (and your schedule).

4. Gift Theme

Frankly, coming up with gift ideas for a coworker can be tough. As the organizer, you can help out by specifying a gift theme, regardless of which method you choose for the actual swapping. There are many gift exchange themes to choose from, but here are a few that would be appropriate for an office party:

Desk Decor
Coffee! (mugs, beans, etc.)
Company Colors
Office Munchies

Hopefully these work gift exchange ideas have at least given you something to chew on. As a guiding principle, think about keeping things simple and casual for the participants. After all, a holiday party should be less about following the rules and more about having fun.