Where I work it’s anonymous, so no one would know if you took your own gift home unless you said which one it was. But if it’s public knowledge who brought what then yeah, I’d consider it tactless to take your own back. By doing so you made it obvious that you disliked everyone else’s offerings, which is kind of rude. In a white elephant swap I’d consider it more acceptable (although still somewhat iffy), since the gifts are supposed to be things that aren’t that desirable anyway.
I’m not sure if it’s a male/female thing. More like…spatulas are just kind of boring. I’m female and I don’t think I’d want them so much. It’s like giving someone…I don’t know, socks, or something.
I’ve never understood the appeal of these Christmas gift swapping games. They used to have one every year at a place where I worked and there was always someone who wound up pissed off or disappointed. Hey, what a great way to build a sense of camaraderie among your employees – have them STEAL from each other! :rolleyes:
I can maybe see it working in a small group of good friends where all the gifts are jokes. But if there’s any real value to the gifts it’s just ugly and painful. There’s no fun in unwrapping something cool and then having it taken away from you. And there’s no fun in getting something cool if you know you have to screw over someone else to get it.
I haven’t seen many Disney movies lately, but if that’s the sort of thing they’re putting out these days, I should check them out! 
That’s why Mickey dumped Minnie, figured out she was fuckin’ goofy.
My brother and the group of boys he hung out with in high school had made a tradition of exchanging 99-cent store gifts each Christmas, because they were all too poor to buy decent gifts. It soon became a competition to see who could bring the most ridiculous gag gift. I still remember the year he gave a wannabe-Ken doll that came dressed in baby pajamas (yes, that’s how it really was dressed.) I think he received a Calgary Winter Olympics commemorative photo book in return, or maybe a shower cap or something similarly ladylike. No one got offended, because the whole purpose was to give gifts while getting a good laugh out of it (or “for the lulz” as the kids are calling it these days). I think these guys would have given each other Disney princess stuff if the 99-cent store had carried it at the time.
I think that the charitable donations would be more in keeping with Scouting standards. Gathering up a Holiday Dinner basket might be a good project that could be started in September, for instance, and the troop could plan what they needed in the basket, and work towards a common goal. And I agree, either it should be no gag gifts or all gag gifts at a gift swap, not some of one and some of the other. Or everyone draws names, and each person writes something positive about whoever he drew…but this would be anonymous, and the leader would check over the notes beforehand. In fact, the leader could accept the notes, write down the comments a couple of days ahead of time, and have the boys draw numbers to see who gets the comment written about him first.
I attended a party for people from my department at work with a “Steal this gift” exchange.
No gift was as bad as spatulas, but no gift was so great that I regretted not bringing one.
Truthfully, the reason I didn’t bring one (apart from lack of warning) was because the limit was $25 and I thought that was excessive.
Actual gifts included 3 bottles of alcoholic substances (I don’t drink but two of the three were stolen), 2 Snuggies, several gift cards and a few other things that were not horrid but were not worth more to me than twenty-five dollars cash.
I sympathize with the OP in that raising an autistic child is a huge challenge. But part of what’s out there for him to deal with is the fact that other boys his age have a sick sense of humor. Scouting is hopefully as safer place for him to deal with that compared to some other settings. He might not ever get to the point where he can take this joke, but jokes like that will continue to happen, and he can at least practice and control his reactions.
On the other hand, I think it’s also a chance for the scout leaders to point out to whoever played the joke that sometimes these kind of tasteless jokes fall flat because they are played on the wrong person at the wrong time.
The last time I was part of one of these it was at Toastmasters, a group that includes some great folks but also some folks who are working very hard to improve their communication and social skills. One woman, who worked at a grocery store, brought a package of hamburger. Raw, still cold, she had I think just gotten off her shift. This was not intended as a gag gift, I don’t think. The woman who picked that gift was Hindi, from India. I about died. She was not ungracious about it in any way, but fortunately someone swapped with her later and she actually wound up with a nice gift.
I should point out that I get all my information about Disney from crudely drawn pornographic fan art.
The best comparison to illustrate would probably be an Aladdin alarm clock. Would a Girl Scout be expected to balk at that? (But then they allow urchins and dykes, don’t they?) I know, this shit has got to be sorted beforehand and no boy’s going to be a friend to women because he got a princess alarm clock, but if it was meant as a ‘Ha ha ha only girls or homos would like that and we’ve got neither, right guys?.. Right?’ joke it’s just so lame. But I guess the whole swap sounds lame overall. Agree that rather than hurt people’s feelings or expose variances in economic backgrounds (even with a price cap), they’d have been better off getting toys for tots.
[quote=“robby, post:41, topic:522045”]
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 #1 or 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]Also, the Scout leaders have their own Yankee Swap separate from the Scouts. Last year, I ended up with the same gift I brought. ;)[/li][/QUOTE]
Well, we had our Yankee Swap last night.
They actually changed the rules this year. This year, you had to decide whether to steal someone else’s gift or to select and unwrap a gift. (You weren’t allowed to unwrap a gift before deciding to swap.) These rules were basically the same as those outlined by Lamia except that people who are stolen from could only open a new gift. They were not permitted to steal someone else’s gift.
The upside to this rule change was that most Scouts opted to unwrap a gift instead of stealing a gift…until near the end, when the number of unwrapped gifts dwindled and a lot of stealing happened.
You know, on the whole, I agree with you. There were a lot of hurt feelings last night.
I didn’t want to steal a particularly desirable gift because I didn’t want to hurt the recipient’s feelings. I ended up with some crappy Dunkin’ Donuts ground coffee. The gift I brought was apparently very popular, because it was stolen repeatedly. The biggest jerk in the group ended up with it. :rolleyes:
The jokes battered their ears relentlessly, while flames licked at their reddened flesh; Walt and Roy cried out to Satan for mercy, and to the LORD for forgiveness, but there would be none…
If people want their gifts to be stolen, they should start bringing better gifts.
You’ve clearly never been to this place.
Hmm… were adults involved with the yankee swap? like did they get to open presents and steal and what not?
If so, one of the adults needed to steal the clock so the poor kid got another shot.
Having said that though, the whole point imo of White Elephant/Yankee Swap is for there to all gag gifts or healthy mix of REALLY good gifts and gags.
We did one at our Referee Christmas party and it was great fun. One person did put in a pretty boring “Umm I guess this would be fun if you were an entirely different person and in an entirely different group” gift and the poor girl who got it was stuck with it. Everything else was either a really good present or a crazy gift.
Not much to add in response to the OP that hasn’t already been said. With younger participants, I’d limit this type of gift exchange to ONLY gag gifts, as the presence of some really cool stuff in the mix is likely to end with some unhappy recipients of less cool items.
I ended up as the big loser at the Steal-This-Gift exchange this past weekend. This one had a twist, in that you were supposed to put a very short rhyme or haiku about your gift on its wrapping. Anyone who correctly guessed what the present they were about to open was could keep it, i.e., the gift wasn’t available for stealing. Gifts were limited to $10 in value. We spent no money at all and instead re-gifted two gag gifts from previous Christmases: an Elmer Fudd chia head and a mechanical chicken that played “The Chicken Dance” and, well, danced. What was spectacular about the chicken was that if you wrung its neck, which is to say, if you choked the chicken (HA!), it made these gagging noises as if it was being strangled. Which it was.
The first three people to draw guessed their gifts correctly, including the person who opened up the chicken. I sort of thought she cheated a bit, because she didn’t just go by the little inscription my wife wrote on the package- she picked up the gift bag and squeezed it so she basically got to feel the contours of the gift it contained.
Anyway, I was to go fourth. I got a set of plastic condiment bowls on a small tray. OH, THE HILARITY!!! I hadn’t guessed my gift from the rhyme, so my gift became the first available to be stolen. Not surprisingly, it never was, so it came home with me and will make for some lovely bath toys for our toddler. Technically, the invitation only said “White Elephant gift exchange,” so that leaves a lot of room, I guess. Still, though, at a gift exchange including an Elmer Fudd chia head, the dancing, choke-able chicken, pajama pants with beer mugs on them, a t-shirt that lights up when it picks up a wi-fi signal, tacky fertility figurines, etc., I sort of thought that whoever contributed the condiment set sort of missed the spirit of the whole thing. A Disney Princess alarm clock, on the other hand, would have fit in nicely.
The Elmer Fudd chia head was stolen its maximum number of allowable times, incidentally.
Oh god, I love that movie.