As mentioned in another post, we play games, many games, at Christmas. One of our most fun games (at least I think it is) is the Gift Grab Game. It's a fun activity for after Christmas dinner, and before everyone settles down to watch one more Christmas movie.
The more people playing, the better, but I'd say six to eight is the absolute minimum. This Christmas we will have 10 people playing, but we've had as many as 16 in our family room playing with the resulting hilarity.
Here's how you do it:
- Print out the cards, cut them apart, and put them in a basket. You can print on paper, or print on card stock if you want to keep these for another year.
- Acquire the same number of gifts as participants. I always get one or two extras if there are children participating so that no one is horribly disappointed and then they can do one "trade" at the end of the game.
- The gifts are inexpensive, sometimes useful, sometimes funny. I mostly shop at Dollar Tree, Five Below, or the Target $1 aisle. What have I bought in the past? Here are a few ideas, but you can tailor your gifts to your participants: fuzzy bed socks, flavored chap stick, chocolate Santa, little stuffed elf, bobbleheads, ornaments, a bag of Christmas M&Ms, playing cards, little Christmas books (like The Night Before Christmas), etc. Really, just go to a Dollar Store and let your imagination run wild.
- Put each gift in a paper gift bag and tape or staple it shut.
- When ready to play, have everyone sit in a circle and put all the gifts in the center. Devise a method (youngest to oldest, alphabetically, etc.) and let each person pick out a bag but without looking in.
- Once everyone has a bag, open the bags and discard them. Everyone should be able to see what all the gifts are at all times throughout the game.
- Now start playing. The first person draws a card from the basket and follows the directions. Don't put the card back in (you can collect them when the game is over if you want to save them for next year). Go around the circle at least two times. If we all want to keep playing, we go around three times.
- At the end, everyone is usually laughing and accusing others of having "stolen" their favorite gift.
- If there is a distraught young child, bring out the extra couple of gifts (usually candy or bag of cookies) so that no one is unhappy at the end.
- Depending on the number of people, this takes at least 30 minutes and can take longer.
- As an addendum, I'll mention that I'm getting slightly nicer gifts this year because the children are all growing older and (a) they aren't as thrilled with trinkets as they used to be and (b) we don't have many more years to all be together for Christmas, so I'm trying to make this one extra nice. Some of the items I've already secured for this year: Gourmet hot chocolate mix, a Fair Isles weave cap, gourmet imported coffee, the collectible White House Christmas ornament, Classic Christmas stories and poems book, etc.
