White Elephant Party Gift Suggestions

Every year (for the last 12 years) John Mark and I throw a huge White Elephant Christmas Party. It is such a fun gathering with all of our friends and no kids. It is a good time to let loose, catch up, and drink....a lot!

I wanted to outline the rules of our white elephant party in case you want to throw your own....plus give some great gift ideas.

A white elephant should be something you own that you can't wait to get rid of....complete garage sale material....nothing you actually "buy". Here are the rules we follow

1. You may not buy an item for the gift exchange
2. You can not give an item received in previous years
3. The more creative the better
4. Nothing is off limits

We run the rules so that everyone draws a number and that is the order in which you can pick gifts. When "1" goes and draws a gift and unwraps it....Then "2" can either steal "1's" gift or pick a new one from the pile. This keeps going until all gifts have been chosen. Our rule for stealing gifts is that a gift can only be stolen twice and then when it is the third party hands it is frozen and can no longer be in play. Because "1" gets such a bad deal in drawing first we always let them at the very end swap gifts with any unfrozen item. So then "1" can be the best number to draw.

There are years that people have fought to get the chia pet or the box of half drunken decade old liquor. Last year everyone wanted the stressballs. Each year is a whole new adventure to see what gifts are fought over...and what remains as just junk. Here are a few items we have given in the past for more ideas.

1. A popcorn tin of my single socks I could not find matches for
2. A community service vest from John Mark's high school days (won't go into why he has one of those)
3. An old bowling trophy of my grandpa's featuring just the backside of a horse....I mean really who doesn't want an ass trophy.
4. A really bad oil painting
5. A barbie riding an oil can with boots and a cowboy hat on in honor of our friends with oil wells


Basically we just look through our cabinets and storage boxes, and put something together....one of my favorite gifts my friend Tammy did was to put a small back massager (shaped like a ladybug) in a box, and then right before the gift exchange she turned it on....everyone was dying laughing....but scared to open the box.