What are your "Rob Your Neighbor" rules?

CWest0405

We celebrate Christmas Eve with my husband's family every year, and this year we are hosting.  Instead of buying gifts for everyone, the adults have a $15 gift exchange.  It's kind of the highlight of the party, and each year the host comes up with the rules.  I'd like to come up with something different and fun this year.

This is what we did last year - it involved drawing numbers, dice, and a timer.  Everyone draws a number, then everyone picks a gift and opens it in the order of the number they drew.  Then we set the timer - I think it was for 5 minutes - and each person rolls a pair of dice and passes them to the next person.  If you roll doubles, you can steal someone else's gift.  Once the timer goes off, its over. 

jenniann87

My Dads family does something of the sort. We call it the Chinese Gift Exchange. Everyone (adults) bring a wrapped gift,limit is $30. The gifts are put in a pile in the middle of the circle. The "host" of that year goes around with a deck of cards, everyone draws a card. You go in order starting with Ace of Diamonds going down King, Queen, Jack, etc. then onto Heart, Spades and Clubs. The first person picks and unwraps a gift. The next person can then either "steal" the gift from someone or pick out of the gift pile. Each gift can be stolen 3 times. Once it is stolen for the 3rd time that gift is out and whoever is in pocession of it is the owner. This will go on til there are no more gifts left in the middle. It is a little confusing but it is soo much fun.

shanesfiance

We went to a neighborhood Christmas party where, in addition to the gift exchange where you draw a number and steal presents, the hosts had bought an extra, special gift and wrapped it in layer after layer of boxes--I think about 10-12 boxes wrapped one inside of the next.  She had used lots of tape, different types of tape, etc to make it harder.  Each person rolled two dice--if you got doubles, you got a chance to try to open the present--but you had to do so wearing oven mitts.  While the person tried to open the boxes, everyone else kept rolling until the next person got doubles, then they got to try to open the gift.  It was hilarious, lasted about 20 minutes and was pretty much the highlight of the night.

One word of caution:  make sure that gift is unbreakable--things get a little crazy with people trying to break into those boxes to find the gift.