topic Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please. in Holiday

White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

house_cat — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:20:12 GMT

My family will be gathering at my house for Christmas. Everyone is traveling from out of town, so I don't want to ask them to pack anything extra.

My kids, my niece and their significant others are all in their late 20s and early 30s - none are married - there are no little children.

I was thinking of creating a white elephant gift exchange. I can purchase and wrap all the gifts myself.

If you have suggestions for gifts that will be interesting and possibly appeal to the young and the old, I would love to hear them.

Thank you!

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

jackthebear — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:22:57 GMT

we did this a few years ago, and it was hard no one needs or wanted anything.

after that no more gifts

I know it's not what you wanted to hear

or just ask everyone

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Group 5 minus 1 — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:23:14 GMT

What exactly is a White Elephant gift exchange? Asked DH and he did not know.

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

tends2dogs — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:23:24 GMT

Price range?

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

house_cat — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:24:30 GMT

@tends2dogs wrote:
Price range?

$15 - $20

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Group 5 minus 1 — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:24:46 GMT

@jackthebear: You are very wise.

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

jackthebear — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:25:04 GMT

@Group 5 minus 1 wrote:
What exactly is a White Elephant gift exchange? Asked DH and he did not know.

i think that's when you all pick a number and take turns picking a present and can swap the boxes?

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

house_cat — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:25:52 GMT

@Group 5 minus 1 wrote:
What exactly is a White Elephant gift exchange? Asked DH and he did not know.

I'm sorry. I'm on a short break at work - need to get back to business. Maybe someone else can explain how it works?

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

jackthebear — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:26:47 GMT

@Group 5 minus 1 wrote:
@jackthebear: You are very wise.

thanks

yeah my sister and I were getting irked at the lack of response/interest from the kids mainly our sons.

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Travone — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:29:17 GMT

We do our white elephant a bit different. We do small jokey items. The uglier the better. If we have something laying around the house, it is gifted. Small items from the dollar store. Of course everything is beautifully wrapped so you never know what you might get. It a lot of fun.

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

tends2dogs — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:33:11 GMT

All the gifts are on a table. One at a time, a person chooses a gift and opens it as everyone watches. The next person selects a gift and has the choice to open it or pick a gift that has been opened that they would like. If that is the case, they give their unopened gift to the person they took the gift from....and so on.

I hope that wasn't too confusing! I tried @house_cat .

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Mz iMac — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:35:05 GMT

The Dollar Stores & the Five Below stores have gifts (games & toys) from "back in the day" stuffed inside those old fashion fish net xmas stockings.

Remember these?

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Marsha2003 — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:35:22 GMT

Check out this list from Esquire magazine. Some items are clever, some are too adult, but maybe you'll get some inspiration.

White Elephant Gifts

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Alison Wonderland — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:35:41 GMT

@Group 5 minus 1 wrote:
What exactly is a White Elephant gift exchange? Asked DH and he did not know.

Here you go: https://www.whiteelephantrules.com/

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

alicedee — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:36:35 GMT

Our family did it a couple of years, but it quickly died out. My family is large, and it became just an additional expense. And often you couldn't really use what you ended up getting.

What might be fun would be a family trivia game.....questions about things that have happened in the past, little known tidbits of past ancestors, etc. jst come up with a bunch of questions that most of your family would know (you can throw in some obscure stuff to "stump" people!) and divide into teams those who want to play. Candy canes or chocolate Santas to the winning team. You might be able to get a sibling or other family member to help you come up with the questions/stories.

One year we had all the little children do an impromptu Nativity play. We just had pieces of colored fabrics to drape over them for costumes, and a wrapped up baby doll for Jesus. It was not very long....ad libbed mostly..., but precious!

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Travone — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:37:52 GMT

Sorry, I didn't give you any suggestions. It sounds like you want to have a "real" gift exchange and not a jokey gift exchange.

For thos who don't know there are many ways a whilte elephant exchange works...I'll tell you how we do it. Everyone brings a nicely wrapped gift (doesn't mean the gift is nice). We pull numbers to see who gets to pick the first gift. They do not open it. The next person can choose any gift they want....even one that has already been chosen. It gets to be a lot of fun "fighting" over gifts and you don't even know what it is. After all gifts have been chosen it is time to open the gifts. We do ours one at a time. I know some people continue the gift "stealing" process after the gifts have been opened....we do not. As I said we do joke items. One year a nephew was remodeling his house and had an extra (new) toilet seat....yep it made it to the white elephant. We usually laugh for a long time over the gifts.

Now to my serious suggestions in the $15-$20 price range:

Gift cards - Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Gas cards

Books

Hand cream

Money Clip

Slippers

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

tends2dogs — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:38:06 GMT

We did this at church a few times. The gifts had to be for any gender or age.

I will try to think of some of things that were brought:

Boxes of candy

Nuts

Flashlights

Pen and Pencil sets

Someone brought a handmade birdhouse/feeder

Flameless Candles

I will keep thinking .

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Catiele — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:39:30 GMT

We do this every year with my side of the family. It's always fun. I just run out of ideas. May go to the dollar store.

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Carmie — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:49:09 GMT

Nice calandar
bottle of wine
wine glasses
Pot holders and kitchen towels
candles
box of candy
lottery tickets
Starbuck gift card
a nice warm throw.
coffee travel mug

Re: White Elephant gift suggestions, please.

Nonametoday — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 18:02:00 GMT

Someone is supposed to end up with something crazy. I did this 3-4 years ago. I went out the afternoon before the stores closed and picked up lots of stuff in a kitchen departmen which was reduced by 75% and some Starbuck's and McD's gift certificates. Useful kitchen stuff such as nylon utensils for Calphalon, etc.,salt & pepper shakers, egg poachers. And for the white elephant, I wrapped a bundle of 8-track tapes. The purpose of the game was to avoid the 8-track tapes.

Last year there were 15 of us but 3 were young children, so we played Bunko as we had 12 adults. Since I was hosting, I put in $5 for each player and at the end, the one with the most Bunco's got $15, the one who won the most games got $40 and the one who lost the most got $5.

One year we played Balderdash which is more fun than you can imagine with young people, one of whom is a broadcast journalist, an advanced English teacher, a communications major. Everyone loved it. It was fun to see some other players stump the English teacher and comm major.