Every year on the first Saturday in December I have a party for 30 or so of my closest friends. My roommate and I spend days cooking goodies, decorating for the holidays, and cleaning the apartment from head to toe! Well, I invite 30 or so and am usually lucky enough to have 20 or so actually come (which is a great turnout). It's an ornament exchange party, and for those of you who have been to a cookie exchange they are nothing alike! It works like this:
Everyone brings a wrapped ornament, set of ornaments, or other christmas style decoration that costs at least $5 and no more than $15. Everyone at the party draws a number out of a basket. The person with number 1 opens one of the wrapped packages and shows it to everyone (who then proceed to oooh & aaah on cue). The person who is number 2 then has the option of stealing the first package or opening a new one. If they steal the first package, then person number 1 gets to open another package. The only rule about stealing is that you can't steal back a package from the person who stole it from you. The more stealing that goes on, the more fun we have!
This year we had 22 people in the apartment and one person who mailed an ornament because she moved away and still wanted to be able to participate - so 23 ornaments and decorations to be opened and stolen many times! The party doesn't run very late, people usually hang out for a total of 2 1/2 to 3 hours having cocktails and snacking on the goodies. The exchange itself usually takes 30-45 minutes, depending on how much people steal ornaments from others. It gets loud and roudy and I LOVE IT!
And now it's done for another year and I can turn my attention to the remainder of the holidays and then GRADUATION!
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1 comment:
That sounds like fun! In grad school I learned that some people call that whole process of opening packages and then stealing what other people have a "Yankee Swap" I'd never heard that before.
Yay for graduation!
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