You're going to end up at a lot of parties in the next 10 days. Some good, most horrendous. Here  are a few tips for getting out of a couple bad holiday situations.

Problem: Bad Party with more old people at it than you expected. What I do: Guerilla warfare. There's a laundry list of things you can do to destroy a party from within. Number one is clog the main toilet. This can shorten a party by hours, and if it's a small apartment with only one bathroom, you could bring it to a screeching halt right then and there. The best way to do this is with paper towels. Toilet paper is made to break up in water; paper towels are made to keep their structure as well as possible. Smuggle paper towels into the bathroom. This might be tough to pull off; if people are around, do it one at a time, like how Andy Dufresne smuggled the pieces of his cell wall into the yard in Shawshank Redemption. When you have a bunch, flush 'em. Once the problem is known to the host, say something like "thanks for having us, looks like you've got your hands full, though!"
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Problem: Yankee Swap/ White Elephant gift exchange. What I do: Fake gifts. I hate these things. I always pick number 12 or something and end up with a cow-themed butter tray or some other worthless crap. But now I've figured out how to make sure the cow butter tray doesn't ruin my entire holiday season. Let's say the limit is 5 bucks. Go to the dollar store. Locate the 5 worst items in the store. Buy them. You've now spent 5 dollars. Wrap them all individually with different wrapping paper. Make sure they're eye-catching, like with shiny paper and whatnot. Once you're at the party, sneak them all into the gift exchange pile. You've now ensured that there are 4 extra gifts in there, and that they're all capable of drawing the eye. You've planted the gifts, now it's time to force everyone to get drunker than usual. Oh yeah, make sure you build up a high tolerance to alcohol before this. Some of you started this process years ago. You can also pretend you're drinking booze but you're really not. For example, drink plain cranberry juice and claim it has vodka in it.

Encourage excessive drinking. If you can get people to start toasting like crazy, great. Once the gift exchange starts, watch people go for the eye-catching wrap jobs you did - like a magician forcing a card. When it's your turn, take one of your own gifts. That way you can make sure at least one of your bad gifts is off the board. Then trade your gift for something decent. At every one of these, there's some gift that's the belle of the ball and everyone wants it. Don't trade for that. The people after you will trade you for it. Trade for the second or third best thing. That gives you a chance to hold on. Once the swap is over, there will be a couple extra gifts. Snatch them up while the drunk people aren't looking. With any luck, they're not your gifts, they're all but guaranteed to be better than what you bought, and the drunks won't notice they're gifts didn't get opened. Ideally, you can walk away with 5 gifts and all you had to do was spend 5 bucks and abandon your moral principles.