The white elephant gift exchange is always a fun one we do at our Christmas Eve parties and the kids especially love it. The rules for it are really simple too:

Each participant supplies one wrapped gift, usually of similar value. The gifts are placed in a central location, and participants determine in which order they will take turns selecting them. The first person opens a wrapped gift, and the turn ends. On subsequent turns, each person has the choice to either unwrap a new present or to "steal" another's. When a person's gift is stolen, that person can either choose another wrapped gift to open or can steal from another player. To avoid never-ending circles, each gift can only be stolen once per turn. The game is over when everyone has a present. Generally, it is recommended to have at least six participants for the gift exchange party. With a larger group, game play may be more protracted.

We usually only spend about $15 on each gift for the game and try to make them funny/kid friendly, since that's mostly who the game is for anyways. And for us, Adults go first, Kids go last based on descending age (so the youngest ones generally get their pick of the gifts). :)

Instead of having our traditional Christmas dinner on Christmas day we would have it on Boxing day (i.e. the 26th). Christmas was always a bit busy and hectic and we would be full of food we got as gifts anyway, so by moving the dinner and food prep a day later it made Christmas day a bit more relaxing and it also spread out the fun of the holiday a bit more. Even when Christmas was done there was always something to look forward to on Boxing day. The kids would also get an extra "Boxing day gift," one more present in an unwrapped box put under their chair before the the big dinner.

Definitely watching It’s A Wonderful Life.

Alcohol ;)

Everyone gets a tin of smoked oysters in their stocking.