The rules card that ends the annual argument, plus cut-apart draw slips for up to thirty players. Circle your house variants before gift one is unwrapped.
| Setup | Everyone brings one wrapped gift to an agreed budget. Draw numbers from the slips below. |
| Your turn | Open a wrapped gift — or steal an opened one from someone else. |
| Stolen from? | Do the same: open a new gift, or steal a different one. No immediate steal-backs. |
| Steal limit | A gift is frozen after its third steal. Circle your house rule: 2 · 3 · unlimited. |
| The end | After the last gift opens, player #1 gets one final swap with any unfrozen gift. |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
Everyone brings one wrapped gift to an agreed budget and draws a number from the slips. Player one opens any gift. Every player after that faces the same choice: open a mystery, or steal an opened gift from someone who then faces the choice themselves — open new, or steal a different gift. No stealing straight back what was just taken from you.
Two limits keep the game from spiralling. A gift freezes after its third steal — it stays with its holder for good (some houses play two steals, some none; the sheet has a circle-your-rule line). And when the last gift is opened, player one gets a final swap with any unfrozen gift, which compensates the one player who never had the chance to steal.
The budget is the social contract — enforce it both directions, since a too-generous gift warps the stealing as much as a lazy one. Keep opened gifts visible on laps, not under chairs. And decide the gag-gift question out loud: a room split between people who brought jokes and people who brought presents is the classic White Elephant failure mode.
Yankee Swap and Dirty Santa are the same game under regional names, with the variants shuffled — which is exactly why the rules card exists.
How many can play? The slips cover thirty; the game is best from about six to twenty.
Can a gift be stolen twice in one turn chain? Different gifts, yes — the only ban is immediately re-stealing the gift just taken from you.
Does player one really go again? In the classic rules, yes — one final swap after the last gift opens.