Save Money with Christmas Gift Game

My wife comes from a big family, so to keep from bankrupting everyone at Christmastime, they have a game that they play, cleverly called "The Game". That replaced having to buy sixteen million presents for all her siblings and their kids, with buying only one gift. With the tough economy, we've also adopted this among our own immediate family too which saves our kids a few bucks. Who doesn't love that? *cough*(stores)*cough*

Anyway, if you'd like to try it and save some money yourself this Christmas, The Game goes like this here:

Each person who wants to play brings one wrapped gift. We say spend about $25 on it, but you can set whatever limit fits your family's budget.

1) After dinner, put all the gifts in a pile in the center of the room.

2) Count the players. If there are fifteen of you, cut fifteen pieces of paper and number them (you guessed it - 1 to 15) , fold them up and put them in a hat, or bowl, or bag, or whatever.

3) Have each person pick a piece of paper out of the hat.

4) Number 1 picks any gift they want, and opens it, showing it to everyone (and of course saying "Wow this is so cool!", etc.

5) Number 2 goes next and can either pick a wrapped gift from the pile and open it or "steal" the gift Number 1 just opened. If they steal Number 1's gift, then Number 1 picks a new gift from the pile and opens it.

6) Number 3 can either pick a wrapped gift from the pile and open it or "steal" either of the gifts Number 1 or Number 2 have opened. If they choose to steal (say from Number 2) then Number 2 can either steal Number 1's gift or pick a new gift. This continues until all players have a gift, either by opening a new one or by stealing someone else's. You can't steal a gift back from the person who stole it from you, but if someone else steals it from them feel free to steal it from that person. Be careful, it can get crazy if everyone wants the same thing!

7) Finally, after the last gift is opened, Number 1 gets to either keep what they have, or swap it for anyone else's gift. Now the game is over and it's time to rip on everybody who took what YOU wanted, and defend your reasons for taking what you got!

Hope this helps you have some fun while you save some money, and let me be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas!
Love,
derifter