Some background

Every year our group of friends and their children get together for a holiday party. Obviously it would be expensive for everyone to buy everyone else at these parties a present, but there are other options. One would be to do the Secret Santa exchanges where people draw names out of a hat, but what if you draw someones name and have no idea what types of things they like for gifts? Dirty Santa (also known by many other names) has helped us to solve that problem.

We have been playing the Dirty Santa game at our annual Christmas parties for over 5 years. As alcohol is a common favorite at our parties, we restrict the Dirty Santa exchange to adults only and buy individual presents for the kiddies. However, this is easily mitigated so that children and teens can enjoy the festivities of the game by simply asking your guests not to bring alcohol.

Our Dirty Santa Christmas parties are the highlight of our year and I have found more and more people asking to be invited when they hear about how fun they are. We owe most of that to the excitement of the Dirty Santa Gift Exchange.