Can you name all nine of Santa's reindeer? If so, you get first pick of the presents in the pile.
(This gift exchange game can also be called a Yankee Swap or Dirty Santa.) The game continues until everyone has a gift. Any player whose gift is stolen gets to pick again. 3 can then steal either gift, or choose and unwrap another, and so on. 2 then either "steals" that present or picks and unwraps another one from the pile. 1 chooses and unwraps a gift, then shows it to everyone else. Draw numbers out of a hat to see who gets to pick from the pile first. Invite everyone to contribute a wrapped gift. "Stealing" from other participants gives this gift exchange game an element of unpredictability. Hand each person his or her spool of yarn and let the mayhem ensue. You want to make it as difficult as possible for the gift recipient to follow his or her yarn through the "cobweb" of different colors to find the present. Unwind the yarn as you zigzag across the room, trailing it under furniture, looping it around banisters and over curtain rods, anywhere you can. Tie one end of a spool of yarn to each gift-blue yarn to one player's gift, red yarn to another, and so on. Designate one room for the party, and assign each player a yarn color. This wacky search game was all the rage during the Victorian era.
It becomes that person's responsibility to pass it along, like a hot potato, the next year. Wrap up your most egregious or inexplicable Christmas present from last year (sad-eyed ceramic cat, anyone?) for an unsuspecting family member. The box rotates like that until it has made the rounds of all the friends, ending up back with Anna, complete with personal notes from her pals and their gifts to her. The first friend takes out a gift, puts in three of her own, adds to the note, and ships everything on to the next. Anna Baldwin, a reader from Arlee, Mont., does this with her three best friends from college: She fills a box with locally made, low-cost items-one for each friend-and a personal note, and mails it off.
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