Deb's "Favorite"

by Karen Huber
(Bloomington, Illinois)

For many years, our American Business Women's Association (ABWA) chapter has done a gift exchange at our December meeting but we add to the fun by allowing some legitimate stealing of gifts to occur. We gave our annual game the title of Deb's "Favorite" because she good-naturedly insists she hates this game as she always gets her favorite gifts stolen.

Everyone brings a wrapped gift (put a dollar limit like $10 to $15 value). To determine who starts, we have a coordinator who makes up numbered slips and all participants draw a number. Number one selects a package, opens it, admires it, and she is done. Number two can then either steal number one's gift or open another. Number three can steal from one or two or open a new gift. This will go on until all gifts are opened.

To prevent it from lasting forever, our rule is that a gift can only touch three hands before it is "dead" for stealing. So, the opening of the gift is one, a first steal is two, and a second steal of that gift is three and permanently is “dead” and belongs to that thief. After the last gift is opened, we let number one chose to keep what she has or she can make one steal from the gifts that are not yet "dead".

This year, we did a different twist. We opted to bring white elephant gifts instead of new gifts for the exchange, and then we donated the $10-$15 we would have spent on our gift to go to our chapter's scholarship fund.

TPQ Comment: Karen, thank you for contributing. What a great idea to use the money for a scholarship fund. Doing a white elephant style gift exchange is more fun anyway :)