So tonite I am hosting the company Christmas party at my house for the employees of the boutique that my boutique is housed within. These are a group of ladies I see and work with every day. We are having a nice dinner, prepared by Wendy, the woman who owns the other boutique, and I am taking care of the hosting duties, libations and hors dourves. We will also be having a cookie swap, but the highlight of the evening will be the Yankee Swap.
The Yankee Gift Swap or the White Elephant Gift Exchange dates back as early as 1828. Wiki says: "popular theory suggests that Ezra Cornell brought the term into popular lexicon through his numerous and frequent social gatherings, dating back to as early as 1828." The participants bring a gift, we have chosen a $25.00 cap on gifts, to be put into a pile. Each person chooses a number from a hat to determine picking order. Number one has the best number because not only does one get to pick first, but the way that I play, one gets to pick last and end the game.
Wiki describes the rules as:
The participant with #1 unwraps any gift from the pile and then shows it to everyone. Each successive participant, in the order determined from the drawing, or in clockwise or counterclockwise order, can either 1) "steal" an already opened gift (if there's one they really like) or 2) be adventurous and go for a wrapped gift from the pile. If the participant chooses to steal, the person whose gift is stolen now repeats his turn and either 1) steals another person's gift (he cannot immediately steal back the gift that was just stolen from him) or 2) unwraps a new gift.
The whole point of Yankee Swap is to entertain, but sometimes people get so wrapped up in the rivalry of the game, it becomes more of a spectacle and you learn a lot about some people when gifts and swapping are involved. I'm going to make sure there is plenty of wine and that the good times will continue to roll all evening long. I'll take notes and post the results tomorrow if they are blog worthy-which would be a bonus gift for me!! And in true Candy fashion, I'm going to rev the girls up and try to get the rivalry going.
I can't wait to get the game started to see who's going to fight over the Chia Pet and the Clapper. Oh the joy of holiday cheer....
12 comments:
Coincidentally, I caught the clapper at a Christmas party one year.
*probably tmi*
Good luck with your yankees! :-)
I had a bad "Secret Santa"/gift exchange experience once at a job and I vowed to never participate in another one again. Basically, i was told that we were just to buy small things and that the budget was $10 MAX. So, I bought a funny calendar, like joke of the day or something, and then got to the exchange only to discover that it was essentially a giant liquor swap. That's what everyone wanted, and that's pretty much what everyone got, and everyone went over the budget into like $20-25 territory. And it was supposed to be anonymous, but me and like 2 other people who followed the rules and got gifts that were deemed "lame" (and not alcoholic, I guess) were actually CALLED OUT by our boss. He basically forced the people who brought those gifts to admit it was them and then everyone ridiculed us and the people who got our gifts just bitched about it the entire time. Later, I thanked everyone for showing me the true meaning of Christmas and told them not to even ask me to participate the following year.
And what white elephant would be complete without the singing bass?
I always go with fake dog poop at those things. You can't go wrong with poo!
I participated in that game last year. Adults, actual adults were fighting over a Mr. Potatohead.
Please god... let there be lots of free wine!
Oh I love Yankee swap. Let us know what beauty you get.
Have fuuuuun!!
And speaking of Yankees . . .
Nah, just kidding.
You know someones gonna get stuck with the "Snuggie."
Good grief! With my luck, if I hosted a Yankee swap, everyone would swap fruit cakes.
Haha, I never heard of this, it's like an evil Secret Santa!
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