Many public schools don’t allow gift exchanges during the Christmas season, but some do and certainly many private schools do. Many fun games can be created to make the gift exchange really fun and festive for kids.

There are several activities you can impose to make the gift buying interesting. For example, you can declare that one of the rules of the gift exchange is that gifts must be handmade or put together in some way and not purchased. You can take this a step further by declaring that the gifts feature the school’s colors in abundance. Perhaps they might also somehow incorporate the school’s mascot.  Definitely in a gift exchange with children, there should be a low dollar limit on the gifts, such at $5.  But once the gifts are ready, there are many fun exchange activities and games that can be used to make this even fun and memorable for the kids.

You can use a “white elephant” gift exchange method.  Here the kids draw a number and choose their gift from the pile of gifts in order by the number they drew. They can exchange their gift for a different one if they choose. A gift can only be “stolen” three times and the person who drew the first gift can “steal” a gift at the end of the gift exchange if they like. Kids always get a kick out of the “stealing” aspect of the white elephant gift exchange.

Children enjoy buying gifts for other people, so having them draw names is an excellent activity for a gift exchange. To add a twist, make the gift activity interesting by telling the children they can’t tell their recipient they are buying for them. Then create a fun activity during the exchange itself to play up the “mystery” element of the gift exchange.  In the mystery scenario, you can have each child open their gift, then try and figure out who it is from. If the children were asked to make a gift, this can be particularly fun, as some children might have drawing skills, or woodworking skills which might make it easier or harder for the other children to decide who have them a gift.  As the children open the gifts, have them guess who the gift is from. If they are wrong, they have to do a little dance or silly physical act before making another guess. This repeats until they guess the right giver of the gift they have been given.

Another fun activity for gift giving among children in a classroom is to have each child make a game piece for an unknown game board. Everyone brings a handcrafted game piece to play with on the communal game board.  There can be rules as to it’s size, for example, no larger than 2 inches high.

The “game board” can be nothing more than a large rug that’s been fashioned into some sort of game, ideally a Christmas themed game. Always popular is “get Santa back to the North Pole” played much like Chutes and Ladders or Candyland. Since most children know how to play these games, the learning curve is small and at the Christmas party, they can get to playing right away. To keep with the gift exchange idea, each child can be asked to bring their handcrafted game piece wrapped and the pieces can be exchanged as gifts before everyone plays on the big game board.

It is strange to think about recent controversies over the 10 commandments in this country. They form the backbone of Judaism and are important in Christianity as well, and form a set of rather simple rules of how one is to live his or her life. The fact is, rarely has so little controversy occurred over such a simple set of rules as the 10 commandments. On both sides, passions rage, with some thinking that the 10 commandments should be proudly displayed in every public institution in the countries, while others believe that we should have the religious freedom to chose whether or not we believe in them, and therefore should not be publicly subject to them.

I have studied the 10 commandments and the controversy surrounding them. There are all kinds of bible study aids available on the internet if you wish to know more about the 10 commandments.  So even if you are not a Jew or a Christian, I suggest that you look into them. They are really pretty simple rules, advising you not to kill, steal, covet your neighbors wife or property and other things like that. The only problem is that the 10 commandments advise you to love no other gods other than the God of the ancient Hebrews, and that is where there are some problems.

You see, although after the recent controversies involving trying to put the 10 commandments up in courthouses, schools and other public institutions.  Christian activists would have you believe that the 10 commandments are about how to live your life in an ethical way, but this is only part of the whole story. They are every bit as much about worshiping a particular god, and in my opinion I should not be subjected to that admonition when on federally owned property. There is nowhere in our Constitution where it says that the bible is part of the law of the land.

After putting up the 10 commandments should we go farther, and put up passages from Leviticus advocating stoning women for infidelity, or non-believers for being against the religion? The fact is, if someone wants to believe in UFOs, or two thousand year old gods, or fillings in their teeth which let the Russians speak to them, I say let them. But let us not all be subjected to the 10 commandments, or any other superstitions for that matter, just because some people can not look at the world without their delusions.