Ideas for office holiday party

Spice things up at your gift exchange with a little friendly competition. For a gift auction, have each of your employees bring in a gift that will be put on display in the office. Then, assign each employee a certain number of points (100 usually works well, for example) with which they can bid on the gifts they like as they're presented. Let the auction run until each employee has used up his or her points and everyone wins a gift. And if you prefer to keep things a little quieter, you can always run it as a silent auction. In that case, put boxes in front of each gift so that employees can write their bids on slips of paper to be drawn and checked for a winner afterward.

Book exchange

This one works especially well if your office is full of bookworms. Have each employee bring in a copy of his or her favorite book, or a book by his or her favorite author. To decide who gets which book, simply draw names out of a hat. And to make things even more special, you can ask employees to write a note to the recipient, explaining why that book is so important to them. Not only is it a fun and inexpensive way to exchange gifts, but your employees can learn a lot about one another and potentially discover similar interests, too.