Comments on: Yankee Swap

By: Saliira

Saliira — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 02:40:30 +0000

Yeah, it’s called Yankee Swap only on the east coast of the US, as far as I can tell. We called it a White Elephant Exchange on the west coast where I grew up. And there’s various permutations of the rules, but always fun.

By: Kaelstra

Kaelstra — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 18:26:27 +0000

I always heard this called a White Elephant Exchange.

By: Warclam

Warclam — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:04:19 +0000

Yeah, I didn’t realize it has an actual name. We just call it the solstice gift exchange, since that’s when we do it.

We open stuff before deciding whether to swap, but this sounds like an interesting variant to try.

By: Renee Valentine

Renee Valentine — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 23:13:59 +0000

I’ve heard it as White Elephant and Dirty Santa.

By: Bohn Dlak

Bohn Dlak — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:42:27 +0000

We call it “Dirty Santa” as well.

By: SouthernGirl

SouthernGirl — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:54:43 +0000

My extended family does this and we call it Dirty Santa. Except when we play, we limit the number of times a gift can be “stolen” to 3; after that, the gift is considered “dead”. And at the very end, the person that drew first gets the chance to “steal” from someone else. And yes, we do put a limit on gift cost. I have heard it called White Elephant only once before and had never heard the name Yankee Swap.

By: Music-chan

Music-chan — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:10:09 +0000

Ha, my extended family would do this for Christmas. When we were really young, we’d draw names. Kids for kids, adults for adults. When the kids started getting older though, we just started doing the gift swap. Easier that way.

By: Bill Murphy

Bill Murphy — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:32:13 +0000

I hear a lot of office parties do this. Great way to build working relationships.

By: Sexy 260

Sexy 260 — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:23:00 +0000

Around here it’s called Dirty Santa.

By: Wobin

Wobin — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:29:08 +0000

Our family calls it the Kutthroat Kris Kringle, except we unwrap the gift, -then- choose if we want to swap it for a previously opened gift.

We usually limit the number of times an item can be ‘stolen’ though.