On the Friday before Christmas I get together with several of my girlfriends to toast the holiday and nibble on great cheese spreads and confections without guilt. We’ll listen to old Andy Williams Christmas CDs (Who?), catch up on each other’s lives and giggle until the wee hours of the morning.

Nancy always hosts.  She must have several hundred Santa themed tchotchkes and a bodaciously decked out tree.  We’ve kept up this tradition for close to twenty years.

Many years ago, everyone would exchange gifts with everyone, usually small things like scented candles or bubble bath or other things you can buy for around five dollars. Each holiday guest would buy and wrap six or seven of the same item so that everyone would get the same thing.

A few years back we replaced this custom with a wine exchange.  Each guest spends $15 on a bottle and wraps it in festive paper or places it in a holiday gift bag. Then we draw numbers written on pieces of green Christmas tree shaped construction paper to determine the order for picking the bottle each of us would be going home with.

I love grab bags! It is a great way to handle a gift exchange.

First of all, they are usually set up to have spending limits.  This reduces a lot of stress that can accompany gift buying. Giving becomes less about impressing someone with how much is spent on a gift.

I also like to be surprised.  I like to try new things that I might never think of trying.  A grab bag is a very personal way of giving a gift although the emphasis is on the giver not the receiver.  With any wrapped mystery wine, there’s a chance to find out whether the giver has a favorite bottle or type of grape.  A selection can reveal whether someone relies on the recommendations of a sales clerk or whether she’s drawn to a particular bottle based on the label design.  A selection can also indicate a desire to sample something at a future social gathering.

So this year, I got to choose 3^rd among six people.  I collected a California red that I would probably never have picked from a store shelf myself.  It felt like taking a little adventure home with me.

I was happy to see that one of the more sophisticated wine drinkers chose the bottle I brought, a nice cab I actually serve when I have company.  It may have been a safe selection, but I like to think it will be appreciated with the right meal. The person from our holiday circle who probably is the least into wine unwrapped a bottle of a chocolate wine.  I have seen such wines in tasting rooms in Napa, but I wouldn’t think of buying such a bottle for myself.  I know she was glad with her selection.

It’s a strange force that seems to be at play in a grab bag. Everyone seems to get what he or she needs to get. In our wine exchange that could mean a person receives something that suits her taste or maybe something that expands the range of what she’d normally try. Maybe what we all need is simply to get out of a habit and welcome what comes to us in whatever wrapping it comes in.

It’s funny how a $15 limit for gift buying can open up so many different ways to receive the real value of a gift – and that’s no small thing.