exchanging christmas gifts

Have a cake walk type gift exchange. Place numbered paper stars or ornaments randomly around the floor. When a certain bell is rung or music played, everyone stands on a number. Draw a number and the person standing on the number drawn gets to choose a gift first. Continue until all gifts are chosen. Options attach a number to each gift and the number the guest is standing on gets that numbered gift. Numbers corresponding to gifts could be given to guests as they arrive instead of being drawn.

Have everyone bring a wrapped gift. Place the answers to holiday questions on the gifts. Read the questions and the person giving the right answer gets the package with the answer on it.

Place answers to Christmas jokes (do a search and you will be able to find a lot of cute holiday jokes online) on gifts. Give everyone a joke and they get the gift that has their answer on it. Make sure to go in a circle and read the jokes as a group.

Cut Christmas cards in half. Attach one half to the gifts. Give each person one of the Christmas card pieces and the gift they get is the one that matches the half of their card.Pass the Parcel Exchange Have everyone sit in a circle. You will need a pair of dice, a hat (Santa hat or winter hat), gloves and scarf and wrapped gifts.Have each person in the circle take turns rolling the dice, passing to the next person after their turn. If they get doubles they hurry and put on the hat, gloves and scarf and try to unwrap the first layer on the gift. Have the gift wrapped in many layers and the person can keep taking layers off as long as they do it one layer at a time. If someone else gets doubles they have to hurry and get the hat, gloves and scarf from the previous person and put them on and try to unwrap the package. Play continues until someone reaches the true gift inside. Have several gifts to be opened. Option Play with the dice only and have each person who gets doubles unwrap one layer. Have numbers wrapped in the layers which could correspond to a gift they receive or to gifts that people brought to the party. Make sure to wrap candies and trinkets in some of the layers for extra surprises. Some layers should have nothing.

A fun way to distribute gifts is to have a treasure hunt. This works well if it is for a family party. Clues could be given to each person as to where their gift is hidden or have an actual hunt that leads from place to place.

Have everyone sit in a circle and grab a gift (doesn't have to be one they brought). Have someone be the commentator. Have questions that require people to exchange gifts. For example, have everyone who is wearing red exchange gifts. Next have everyone who has their Christmas tree up exchange gifts. Have some very easy items and some harder and make sure everyone will have a chance to exchange.

Create a story (or use a Christmas story such as Twas the Night Before Christmas and add the left and right words) using the words left and right. Have someone read the story and when the word right is said everyone passes the gift to the right. Do the same with the word left.

For this exchange you will need ribbon or yarn. Use one piece of ribbon per gift. Wind ribbon through the house and intertwined with the other ribbons making a fun web like maze. Attach the end of a ribbon to each gift. Give the other end of the ribbon to each person and they get to unwind the ribbon to find their gift. Hide gifts if desired.

Play pass the presents as you would musical chairs. Play the music and when it stops that is the gift the person gets to open. This is more fun if you pass one or two gifts at a time.

Write the first lines of Christmas carols and place in a bag. Place the remaining part of the song on each gift as guests arrive. When it is time to exchange, each guest pulls out a line of the carol and must match it up to the gift that has the rest of the song. They must sing the song before opening the gift.