The Best Gift Exchange Idea for the Holidays (aka Selfish Gift Exchange)

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll tell you about my family’s Selfish Gift Exchange tradition that we do every Christmas. 

Okay — I’ve found that most extended families eventually come to a point where it doesn’t make sense for every person to give every other person a holiday gift. When you get to this point of family reckoning, there are generally 3 ways to handle it: 1) you stop giving gifts altogether, 2) you pool money for a group charitable contribution or 3) you draw names so that each person gives to just one other person.  My family started out doing #3 — drawing names. The problem was, we were not seeing some of my more geographically distant cousins enough to make even an educated guess about what they liked so — we were either giving complete dud gifts OR playing it totally safe and just exchanging gift cards.  There is nothing that feels more pointless than swapping $30 gift cards. Why even bother?

So, my family brainstormed a bit on some other options. We thought about doing a white elephant exchange, but those can get kind of personal with all of the gift stealing.  Plus I feel like only about 10% of people actually use what they receive from those.  So, we came up with a solution that I have yet to hear anyone else use.  We call it the Selfish Gift Exchange.  It’s a bit of a misnomer, but you’ll see why in a minute.

Here’s how it works. It doesn’t matter how many people participate, but you have to agree to participate in advance. We set an approximate gift value at $30 to make things even. So, each person shops FOR HIM OR HERSELF and buys a gift that they actually want for around $30.  Then each person is required to wrap the gift in anonymous gift wrap with no label.  So, Aunt Sally, who is meticulous about beautifully wrapping presents is going to want to dial it back, so that she doesn’t give herself away. It should be anonymous.  Then, as each person arrives at the exchange venue, they are required to surreptitiously, without anyone seeing, put the anonymously wrapped gift in the designated pile. 

Okay — usually right after dinner, we all gather round the gift pile.  Each person receives a piece of paper and a pen.  One by one, each gift is unwrapped and presented to the crowd for examination.  We get the smaller kids who are not participating to do this job.  Each person has to write down who THEY think bought this gift for him or herself.  So, like, “rake shaped back scratcher?” “Or this motion sensitive toilet night light” “Or how about this antique Apple corer?”  The rule is — you can’t just buy something to throw everyone off, it has to actually be a gift you will use. For example, one year, my brother bought himself an array of fluorescent finger nail polishes. We all protested, but he actually needed them to color code an organizing system he was implementing. So, obviously no one guessed right for him that year.  There should obviously be one gift each person knows for sure — that is the one they brought, but everything else is a mystery. There is usually lots of wild speculation and suspicious stares.  After all of the gifts are unwrapped, the kids line them all up and for each one, the original buyer is required to step forward.  There are lots of questions and groans.  Each person usually says a little something about why they bought what they bought. Everyone grades their own sheet and in the end, there is usually a small prize for the winner. Most years we have more than one winner, so it’s usually a box of chocolates or something that is easy to share.  It doesn’t really matter, because everyone mostly plays for bragging rights. 

We have been doing this tradition for at least 5 years now and everyone loves it. Even my teenage kids save their allowance to join in now.  It is a fun, competitive activity, you learn some things about the interests of your family members, and you get to go home with exactly what you want. I’ve shared this idea with a couple of friends who have tried this with their own extended families with great success.  It works particularly well with families who you don’t see frequently throughout the year.   If you try this, definitely report back and let me know how it goes.  

Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!