Christmas Gift Exchange Wheel
The Christmas gift exchange wheel turns a pile of wrapped presents into a party game: everyone holds a gift, and each spin says whether it moves left, moves right, gets swapped or gets opened.
Everyone brings one wrapped present, roughly the same value, and sits in a circle holding it. Take turns spinning. Whatever the wheel says happens to the spinner's gift, or to everybody's when it says everyone.
The "Open your gift" slice is what ends the game. Once your gift is open you keep it and sit out the passing, but you still spin on your turn, so you can still steal or swap with someone who has not opened yet. Keep going until every gift is open. With one "Open your gift" slice in eight, a big group can play for a long time, so add a second one if the room starts to flag.
Set a value limit before anyone shops, and say it twice. The game falls flat when one gift is clearly better than the rest, because the whole room spends the game trying to get it to one person.
Change the slices to suit the group. More "Open your gift" slices make a shorter game. More steals make a meaner one. For the version where gifts are opened first and stolen afterwards, see the White Elephant wheel, and if everyone is buying for one named person, use the Secret Santa generator instead.
Christmas Gift Exchange Wheel - questions
How does the gift exchange wheel game work?
Everyone holds a wrapped gift and sits in a circle. Each person spins in turn and does what the wheel says: pass left or right, swap, steal an unopened gift, or open theirs. Once your gift is open you keep it. The game ends when every gift has been opened.
How long does the game take?
It depends on the size of the group and on how many "Open your gift" slices the wheel has. Add more of them to make the game shorter, or take some away to make it last longer.
What is a good price limit?
Whatever suits the group, as long as everyone knows it before they shop. The game works best when the gifts are close in value, so one present is not the obvious prize.
How is this different from White Elephant?
In White Elephant, gifts are opened one at a time and the steals come after. Here everyone keeps a wrapped gift moving around the circle until the wheel says to open it, so nobody knows what they are holding for most of the game.