HGG Community Forums

The Gift Exchange can be signed up for by completing the form under "Gift Exchange". The "Gift Exchange" tab will show up a few weeks before the exchange starts.
The exchange is basically you get randomly assigned a player to shop for, and you are provided with a wish list for your person. Your wishlist is sent to the person who will be shopping for you.
You have a month to shop, I think, and you will be able to send horses and money to them for free and anonymously. Sending straws can be done anonymously by having a helper send them for you.

The gifts vary depending on what your gifter has gotten for you. Don't worry about not getting a lot because most people love to spoil their giftees. And in the rare occurrence of a gifter not sending gifts for some reason, Ammit makes sure to reassign a gifter who volunteers to spoil the giftee.

The winter GE was my first one (I participated on Forest only for that one) and I would 100% recommend it! It was an absolute blast looking for gifts for my giftee and it was really really exciting to find something that fit what they were looming for. It also really expanded my understanding of aspects of the game like the auction and the horse search, and receiving gifts was super fun too, of course! Everyone has a really giving spirit and the community is really caring and helpful for the whole season. If you're on the fence about participating, I'd say give it a try for sure!