It’s almost the holidays! Christmas lights are starting to go up, stores are stocked with Christmas decorations, and soon, the Christmas markets will be in full swing too. It also means it’s time to start thinking about what sorts of presents to get for your loved ones. This can be a challenge for a variety of reasons: it’s always hard to know what sort of gift would be perfect for someone (especially if they tell you they’d be happy with anything), and if you have a lot of people to buy gifts for, this can quickly get expensive. And that is why gift exchanges have become so popular: it’s economical (normally, you only buy a gift for a single person), and everyone walks away with something. Oh, and they can be enormous fun too. So, here are some ideas to try amongst your friends and/or family this season!
- Secret Santa
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Of course, we’ll start with the classic. With a Secret Santa gift exchange, each participant is assigned to be someone else’s “Secret Santa” and buys a gift for them. This can be done by drawing names out of hat (although you’ll have to figure out what to do if someone draws their own name), or you can use a website that will randomize and assign Secret Santa’s for you, such as drawnames or elfster. A budget is mutually agreed upon, and it is common courtesy to respect that budget. To make things easier for the Secret Santa, you can request that participants prepare a wish list of things that they would like to receive. On gift swap day, everyone arrives and exchanges their presents. This step can be made more interesting by instructing everyone to wrap and label their presents inconspicuously and have participants unwrap their presents one by one and guess who their Secret Santa was.
- Zero Budget Secret Santa
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Same rules apply as the Secret Santa gift exchange, except the budget is $0. We advise that participants don’t use the $0 budget as an excuse to give a lousy gift. Instead, we encourage them to use the $0 budget as a way to get creative with their presents. This could mean making the present by hand, such as hand-crafting a card or baking a batch of cookies. This could also mean re-gifting, or re-purposing, something that you already own. This could be your chance to pass on your favourite novel, gift all of those makeup and skincare samples that you hoard or make a souvenir out of some memory that you mutually hold.
- White Elephant Gift Exchange
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Similar to Secret Santa, a budget is mutually agreed upon, and participants buy a gift according to said budget. The difference is, you don’t know who will be ending up with the gift that you bought. Participants bring their wrapped gifts (the more discreet they seem, the better) on gift exchange day and place them in the centre of the participants. Participants then determine the order in which they will get to choose a present. The first person picks a gift and unwraps it. The next person has the option to either pick an unwrapped gift or steal the first person’s gift. If a gift is stolen, the person from whom it was stolen has to pick a new gift from the pile and unwrap it. There is a limit to the number of times that a gift can be stolen after which it becomes “frozen” and its owner becomes permanent, so that at some point, all of the gifts in the centre will have an owner, and the gift exchange will then end. Traditionally, White Elephant gift exchanges have been an opportunity to give away impractical or outrageous gifts, but this exchange also works equally well with the usual Christmas presents too.
- Give Back
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Giving presents is meant to be a way to strengthen the relationships that we have with each other, a way to tangibly demonstrate how much we treasure them. So, how about giving back to the community this holiday season as a way to tangibly demonstrate that you care about the rest of your community too? Reach out to a local charity such as Dans La Rue, Chez Doris or Moisson Montreal to find out ways to give or donate. Browse through an international aid catalogue. Several larger charities, such as Unicef, Oxfam, and World Vision, offer gift catalogues where you can purchase life-changing gifts for communities across the world. You can donate toys to the Montreal Children’s Hospital as well. Maybe you will find a giving tree in a shopping mall or in the lobby of a senior centre. There are so many different ways in which you can embody the spirit of giving this holiday season. We encourage you to give a reminder to those who may not be celebrating the holidays with friends and family that they have not been forgotten.
So, happy holidays! We wish you a season of fun, joy, and laughter. We hope that you will find the time to reflect and remember to give the gift of joy and love to someone else too.
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