The rules of a worst-gift contest, and the one that keeps it kind

A worst-gift contest reverses the usual exchange: instead of finding the best present for one person, everybody competes to bring the worst object in the room. Germany calls it Schrottwichteln — junk-wichteln — and it is, reliably, the funniest version of a gift exchange there is.

It is also the one with a failure mode, and the failure mode is not the gifts.

The seven rules

1. Nothing bought new. The whole point is the cupboard, the attic, the drawer nobody opens. A purchased joke gift costs money and is less funny than the genuinely inexplicable object somebody has owned for eleven years.

2. It has to be an object. Not a printout, not a voucher, not a photo of a thing. Something with weight, that can be unwrapped and held up.

3. It has to be clean and safe. Obvious, and worth saying. Nothing broken in a way that cuts, nothing that has been in a shed since 2009 without being wiped.

4. Wrapped seriously. Good paper, a ribbon, effort. Half the comedy is the gap between the presentation and the contents, and a bin bag throws it away.

5. Nobody has to keep it. Say this before anything is opened. A worst-gift exchange where people take home things they do not want is a house-clearance with extra steps. Leave a box by the door.

6. One at a time, out loud. Each person holds theirs up and says what they think it is. The guessing is the game; simultaneous opening is not.

7. And the rule that matters: the joke is on the object, never on the person.

Why rule seven is the whole thing

A worst-gift contest is a comedy format, and comedy formats attract one specific bad idea: using the anonymity to make a point about somebody.

The gift that comments on a colleague’s appearance, a friend’s relationship, someone’s habits, someone’s beliefs. In an exchange where everything is meant as a joke, that item does not read as a joke — it reads as the thing the person actually wanted to say, wrapped.

State the rule once, plainly, in the invitation: the object should be funny because it is a terrible object, not because of who is receiving it. Groups honour this almost without exception when it is said out loud, and almost never when it is assumed.

Judging the winner

There should be a winner — it sharpens everybody’s effort — and there should be a prize that is itself slightly bad.

Three ways that work:

• A show of hands after every gift is open. Fastest, loudest, fine for a big group.
• Two categories. Worst object, and best story behind it. The second category is where the evening actually is: nobody expects the explanation of why somebody owned this to be the good part, and it always is.
• A secret ballot on paper. Slower, funnier at a dinner, and it avoids the group all voting for whoever went first.

How it fits with a draw

Strictly, a worst-gift contest does not need a draw at all: everybody brings something, and the objects are distributed at random on the night.

Drawing names anyway makes it better, for one reason — a person chosen in advance gets a gift aimed at them. Not aimed unkindly: aimed. The truly great worst gift is the terrible object that is somehow, distantly, weirdly apt.

That is the version people talk about the following year, and it is the version that needs the draw two weeks in advance.