Christmas Gift!

One of our favorite family traditions was started, as far as I know, by my great grandmother, Josephine Taylor, who was a very fun and playful sort of individual. The idea is very simple - you have to try to be the first one to say "Christmas Gift" to everyone else who's playing.

A good bit of sneakiness and trickery has to come into play. You can't just waltz right into the room and give the other person a chance to get you. You might, for example, decide to announce "Christmas Gift" to someone who is still asleep, loud enough, of course, to be sure and wake them up. As Sydney did to me this morning. I've also pretended to be asleep to lure someone into coming to check if I'm awake and then getting them with my eyes closed. Heh. That one's hard to pull off if you're a kid because you don't want to waste valuable present-opening time pretending to be asleep. Also your mother will think you're sick.

There's always a few phone calls necessary to say, you know, I'm on my way over to open presents and eat Christmas dinner, and it's very easy to win by simply answering the phone, "Christmas Gift." Of course the other person may try to hold off on calling and try to force you to be the one to call first. This year I plan to just show up over at Hannah's without calling first. So if she wants to know when we're coming, I get to win Christmas Gift.

The game has evolved over the years. Now there are categories: the after midnight on Christmas Eve Christmas Gift, which I won this year; the actual Christmas morning Christmas Gift; the text messaged Christmas Gift; the phoned and in-person Christmas Gifts. Plenty of opportunities for everyone to have a chance at success. We've also expanded the occasions. Christmas Eve Gift counts. There is Thanksgiving Gift, even though there are no actual Thanksgiving gifts. We have Birthday Gift, which is very easy to win because the person whose birthday it is isn't really going to go around and say their own Birthday Gifts. I've even been known to thrown in the odd "Friday Gift" when calling my sister on a Friday. That one I always win, but it doesn't really count because she didn't after all know that we were playing.

So anyway, just as a way to throw in some extra fun for the holidays, you might try playing too.

Oh, and this year there's a new category: Blog Christmas Gift.

I win!