Christmas Gift Exchange Ideas
Christmas gift exchanges are wonderful ways to spend time together during the holidays. Gift exchanges are a great way to bring family members together.
The challenge is to establish the theme or focus of your Christmas gift exchange. If you do the same thing every year, people will get bored and stop participating. Without changing things up every few years, gift exchanges turn into gift card exchanges, which aren’t that much fun, well, in my opinion, anyway. So a person should think about the idea of the subject.
At my wife’s big family reunion last year, we all brought a one pound gift. The gifts were distributed. Then, the story was read of Mr. Right leaving the room and going straight to bed (well, you get the idea) for the gift exchange. People were laughing and joking as they tried to remember which was his right and left hand as the gifts were passed around in the circle. It worked wonderfully. It was a lot of fun to see the creativity in gift-giving. One person gave a pound of pennies, while another gave a pound coin. Another gave him a bag of chips and salsa. Talk about variety. And not to forget, my special gift, which was a pound of spam. Of course, everyone secretly wished that they had received such a gift.
So to help make your holiday season a season of joy and not stress, I’ve put together some Christmas swap ideas for you.
1. The one pound gift is one of my favorites.
2. $3 Fun Card (You can set any dollar amount)
3. $5 Dollar Store or Goodwill Purchase
One year, someone found a heated toilet seat in this themed exchange.
4. Dinner on a plate where the person brings a recipe with most of the ingredients to make the dish
5. Exchange of decorations with dollar amount
6. Theme of entertainment – books, cds, movies
7. Establish a letter of the alphabet for the gift to start with (We haven’t done this swap yet but I think it would be a lot of fun.)
8. Charity exchange where each person would put their favorite charity with contact information. The person who drew the piece of paper was expected to make a donation to charity. Another version of the charity idea is something my wife’s family did. Her sister died young from colon cancer. The family started a scholarship fund in memory of her sister. There is an envelope under the tree each year for the family member to add to the scholarship fund.
So whether you decide to go with a more meaningful gift or a more quirky and fun gift, have fun with your Christmas exchange this year. The real importance is having fun with those who are important to you.