Dirty Santa
This is a classic game that most people know but may call it by a different name. This definitely takes some prior planning and you have to let everyone know about it when you invite them to the party. We play this every year at Jordan's annual Christmas party and at his grandma's house on Christmas Eve.
Tell everyone to bring a wrapped gift and give them a price range such as $5-$10 or $10-$15. Sometimes when we play this it's called "White Elephant Dirty Santa" which means people can bring awful gifts or funny gifts. (I unwrapped batteries when playing at church. Yay.)
To play the game, you count how many people are participating and make that many numbers to put in a bowl. So if you have 18 people, you make pieces of paper with numbers 1 through 18 on them. You pass the bowl around and everyone draws a number.
Number 1 picks out a gift, unwraps it, shows it to everyone.
Number 2 can either steal Number 1's gift or pick a new one.
If Number 2 steals 1's gift, 1 picks a new one and shows it. The round is over. It's Number 3's turn.
Number 3 can either steal 1 or 2's gift, or pick a new one.
If Number 3 steals 2's gift, 2 can either pick a new one or steal 1's gift. 2 can't steal his gift back, it has to be a different gift. If 2 steals 1's gift, 1 can't steal anything because everything has already been stolen that round. Nothing can be stolen twice in one round. That might be confusing, but just remember when the next number is going (4) it starts a new round.
A gift can only be stolen 3 times, then it's "dead". No one else can take it, ever.
The game is over when the last person takes a gift and their round is finished.
So far this year in Dirty Santa I've won a $15 Subway gift card, batteries, and a $5 Target gift card. We'll see what I end up with on Saturday