Stolen GiftsThe rules
How to play White Elephant
The gift swap where stealing is the whole point. Here are the rules most tables use, the house rules people argue about every year, and where the name comes from.
What you need
- One wrapped gift per person, under a price limit everyone agrees on ahead of time.
- A number for each person, drawn from a hat. Print number slips, or write them by hand.
- A room where everyone can see the gifts. Three people can play; so can forty. Allow about an hour for twenty.
The rules
- Everyone adds their wrapped gift to the pile. Nobody says which one is theirs.
- Everyone draws a number. Number 1 opens a gift from the pile and shows it off.
- Each person after that chooses: open a new gift from the pile, or steal one that's already been opened.
- Whoever gets stolen from chooses the same way: open a new gift, or steal a different one. Nobody can steal back the gift that was just taken from them. The chain ends when somebody opens.
- A gift stolen three times is locked and stays with whoever holds it.
- Once the last gift is opened, Number 1 may swap with any gift that isn't locked. Everyone goes home with what they're holding.
House rules
Settle these before the first gift is opened, and say them out loud. Most arguments start here.
- The steal cap
- Three steals locks a gift at most tables. Two keeps a big group moving; four, or no cap at all, makes for longer, louder chains.
- Steals per turn
- Usually no limit: the chain runs until somebody opens. With a big group, some tables cap it, and after that the next person has to open.
- No stealing straight back
- You can't take back the gift that was just taken from you, at least not on the same turn.
- Number 1's final swap
- Number 1 opened first and never got to steal, so they get one swap at the end. Some tables let the person Number 1 swaps with steal in turn, which can set off one last chain.
- The price limit
- Pick one number and stick to it, so a $5 candle and a $60 blender don't end up in the same pile.
- Gag gifts
- Decide up front whether joke gifts are welcome. Mixed piles are funnier; matched piles cause fewer sulks.
Playing remotely
For the office that's spread across three time zones. You still play live, all at once, on a video call. The only extra steps come before the first turn and after the last.
- Set a price limit and a time. Everyone picks a gift ahead: any shop, a gift card, something homemade.
- One person opens stalefish.tv in a browser and shares that tab on the call. Everyone joins from their own phone or computer, up to 40 people.
- The first person in picks Stolen Gifts and chooses "Apart, on a call". Then everyone adds a label and a photo of their gift. A screenshot of the shop page works, and a link is optional.
- Play as usual. Opening draws one of the gifts at random, and it's never your own. You can't steal your own either. If the last gift left is yours, you steal one, and whoever you took it from opens yours.
- At the end, the game says who sends what to whom. Message each other to sort out the sending. Stolen Gifts never asks for anyone's address.
Also called Dirty Santa or Yankee Swap
White Elephant is the name most of the country uses. Dirty Santa is the usual name in much of the South, Yankee Swap in New England, and plenty of offices just call it a gift swap or a gift exchange. The rules barely change from one name to the next.
It isn't Secret Santa. In Secret Santa each person is assigned someone to buy for. In White Elephant everyone brings one gift to a shared pile, nobody knows who brought what, and anything can be stolen.
Why is it called White Elephant?
The story goes that the kings of Siam would give a sacred white elephant to a courtier they wanted to ruin. A sacred animal couldn't be put to work, sold or given away, and feeding one cost a fortune. Historians treat the tale as legend, but the phrase stuck: a white elephant came to mean a costly gift nobody can get rid of.
Swap parties of the 1890s traded unwanted things sight unseen. By the 1910s people were calling them white elephant parties.
Our elephant is the party kind: a white elephant thief in a mask, after the best gift on the table.
Questions people ask
How many times can a gift be stolen?
Most tables lock a gift after its third steal, and it stays with whoever took it last. Shorter games use two; some tables use four, or no cap at all.
Can you steal a gift back?
Not straight away. Whoever just lost a gift can't take that same gift back on the same turn. They open a new gift or steal a different one.
Isn't Number 1 at a disadvantage?
That's what the final swap is for. Once the last gift is opened, Number 1 may trade for any gift that isn't locked.
How long does it take?
About an hour with twenty people. Every steal adds a turn, so a steal cap keeps it from running long.
Can you play White Elephant remotely?
Yes, live on a video call. Everyone picks a gift ahead of time and shares a label and a photo of it, and at the end each person sends their gift to whoever ended up with it. Here's how.
Who keeps track of all the steals?
Usually the person who cares most, badly. Stolen Gifts puts the board on your TV: every gift, its steals, what's locked and whose turn it is, with one phone tapping.
Let the TV keep track
Stolen Gifts runs your White Elephant on the TV, free. One phone taps; everyone else unwraps.