When you organize a Yankee Swap or White Elephant gift exchange, there are several key things you want to remember. I believe the first thing is your overall focus-these gift exchanges are for the entertainment value of your guests, not for the gifts themselves.

If you plan on sending out invitations, give guests brief instructions on the range of gifts to bring and what gifts not to bring. People know these exchanges by dozens of names, and you want to make sure your guests are aware not to bring an expensive gift when everyone else is bringing one less than $10. You definitely don't want anyone feeling bad or embarrassed because they didn't know how the exchanges work.

I've seen these exchanges done several ways. One of most formal ones I've ever attended was an ornament exchange-the ornaments were around $7-10 each. The proper atmosphere quickly broke down however when my boss, a co-worker, and I battled for a crystal rocking horse ornament for literally 15 minutes-I won, by the way. Fortunately I didn't get fired for winning or anything, but it was scary for awhile.

My favorite exchanges however have been ones where creativity is the most important factor. The two best elements of these gifts are either their overall wackyness or their tendency to cause people to battle for them. Give people a little more time for these, and you'll get some of the strangest gifts you've ever seen. At our church parties, we have several items that keep resurfacing somewhere year after year, including a stuffed unicorn named "Elvis" (it now has a belt) and a framed photo of Superman's Mini-Me. We have no idea of their origin, but they just keep coming up.

Some people tend to grab useless household items or buy things that are embarrassing to open. A somewhat awkward moment one year was when the oldest person in the room picked a wrapped box of Depends by coincidence. You could have heard a pin drop until he laughed and said, "Guess I'll just save these for next year!" Then everyone else knew it was okay to laugh. According to the personalities of your guests, you may need to a "no embarrassing item" rule-you don't want things to turn sour if you can avoid it.

Other housekeeping things that you need to keep in mind is you need to have a way to decide who goes first (drawing numbers from a jar is one of the simplest ways) and possibly a limit on how many times a gift can be taken (other people did get tired of watching me and two other people keep trading for 15 minutes). I'm also assuming you'll be having this gift exchange along with food or snack refreshments. It's better to eat first, unless you want grown adults shooting each other with Nerf toys that land in the food-not that that's ever happened to us...moving on.

I hope these tips have been helpful. The main thing is to just have fun. If you remember that, everything else will fall into place very well.

Learn more about this author, Patricia Gilliam.
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