My son’s Boy Scout troop is having their annual Yankee Swap tonight. The rules are slightly different than those outlined by Lamia. They go like this:
[ol]
[li]Everyone draws a number at the beginning of the party.[/li][li]The person with the first number (Person #1) selects and opens a wrapped gift.[/li][li]The person with the second number (Person #2) selects and opens another wrapped gift. At that point, after unwrapping the gift, they have the choice between keeping the gift they just unwrapped and stealing the gift from Person #1. If they steal Person #1’s gift, they give them their gift in exchange. (That’s why it’s called “Yankee Swap.”)[/li][li]The person with the third number (Person #3) selects and opens another wrapped gift. At that point, after unwrapping the gift, they have the choice between keeping the gift they just unwrapped and stealing a gift from Person #1or Person #2. If they steal a person’s gift, they give them their gift in exchange.[/li][li]The gift opening continues in this fashion. The person with the last number gets to choose between keeping the last gift or swapping with anyone else with a higher number. After that, Person #1 (who never had a chance to steal from anybody else, because they went first) then has the option of keeping whatever gift they ended up with, or swapping with anybody else.[/li][li]We have a gift limit of $10, so all of the gifts should be roughly comparable in value.[/ol][/li]
Also, the Scout leaders have their own Yankee Swap separate from the Scouts. Last year, I ended up with the same gift I brought.
At my husband’s old workplace, they did one of those white elephant draws. We were always famous for getting a ridiculous gag gift and hiding a real gift in it. One year we stuck a DVD inside a horrid plastic shower curtain. The next year we put a Best Buy gift card into a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy calendar (which is not very popular amongst tech geeks, but was gladly taken by one of their girlfriends). Another year we regifted a hideous fiber-optic angel doll that we got in his family’s name draw (no idea why they thought I’d like a fiber-optic angel doll) and stuck a Home Depot gift card inside the box. A guy actually ended up stealing the doll for his kid. We told him about the gift card after the draw was done and he was ecstatic.
Boy Scouts have to be at least 11 years old or have completed the fifth grade, or have earned the Arrow of Light Award (in Cub Scouts) and are at least 10 years old.
Trust me, they’re old enough to know that a Disney Princess gift is socially unacceptable.
You’re not required to pray, nor are you required to belong to any particular religion, but it is a requirement of the organization that Boy Scouts (and the adult leaders) believe in God. You cannot be a professed atheist and remain in Boy Scouts.
I personally don’t agree with this requirement, but Boy Scouts of America (BSA) is a private organization, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that they can have this requirement.
Isn’t this the White Elephant type? And it takes for-freaking-ever, as in don’t promise anyone you’ll be home before New Year because you’ll break their heart…
I got one of those lovely candles you get at the Mexican grocer with the Virgin Mary on it one year. That one has since been regifted, and I think I’ve seen it recently at one of those.
But for kids…I think it does need to be very clear that this is either all gag gifts or no gag gifts - or better yet - these are Boy Scouts - no gift for the boys themselves - bring a toy for toys for tots or a food shelf donation. (My Girl Scouts are going caroling at a group home tonight - its never occurred to me to get them presents - if anything - in our “reduce, reuse, recycle” program we are on - with a healthy dose of community involvement - it seems counter productive to what we are trying to teach them.)
That’s not just a shitty gift, it’s almost surreal. Spatulas for a BS gift exchange. Mmmmkay. (I’m wondering if Mom sells Pampered Chef for a living?) :dubious:
Strangely enough, my cousin and her husband (the same cousin I mentioned above!) got their kids spatulas and mixing bowls as one of the kids’ presents last year. The kids LOVE to pretend to cook. On Christmas Day, her daughter Maddie kept serving us her homemade “pancakes” (aka, my aunt’s coasters)
I have a feeling that Barbie will end up beheaded. Or hopefully Mom and Dad will give it his sister and get him an extra G.I. Joe or Transformer or something.
As a former Boy Scout, I would just like to say that it is stories like this that remind me that there are a lot of people involved in Scouting that desperately deserve a solid punch to the groin.
See, I’m not a humorless feminist. That was funny! And I’ll refrain from going into a series of musings on why women’s natural faces will presumably scare people on the street, but men’s won’t.
In that “everyone draws a number” procedure . . . is it considered gauche to trade back for your own gift? I was in a Christmas ornament exchange in which I really hated the tacky ornaments everyone else brought. So when I was the last to exchange, I took back the one I had brought. Everyone said it was a very gauche thing to do, and the following year they made a rule prohibiting it.
And to the OP: if it were a Girl Scouts event, would you object to sports equipment or tools? Shouldn’t boys have a use for a set of spatulas?
(Personally, I’d love to receive a Disney Princess alarm clock . . . but that’s just me.)
The boys in my troop would not complain about spatulas, but then again we consider Cooking to be an Eagle required merit badge!
The barbie clock, however, would result in much hazing of the poor soul who either brought it (unless brought on purpose for the goal of punishment) or the poor soul who received it.
A good Scoutmaster would make the whole thing a fun joke, however, to ensure that no feelings are hurt.
Gradeschoolers? Most Scouts are probably middle-school age, which–ahh–does not make it better. At all.
By the time I was a freshman in college, where most of the guys were at least eighteen, a couple of people in my dorm suite had to make trips home for their Eagle Scout induction ceremonies, so, yeah, some Scouts are a lot older than grade school age.
