This week, since its only a few days before Christmas - I thought it would be appropriate for our topic to be Favorite Holiday Tradition. My favorite Holiday Tradition is our version of “White Elephant” when we have our big Christmas party with friends and family. What we do is bring a gift (we usually set a limit on how much the gift should be) to the party. After we are done eating dinner … we gather all the gifts in the middle of the room - then we put numbers in a hat and draw numbers so we know who goes first. The first person or person #1 - gets a chance to pick a gift from the pile of gifts while everyone watches him open it. Then, person #2 has an opportunity to either steal person #1’s gift or choose a gift from the pile of gifts in the middle - again everyone is watching and this goes on and on until everyone gets a gift. The fun part is watching others steal gifts (if they like the gift that someone already opened). If someone steals your gift, you have a chance to steal a gift from someone else or pick a gift from the pile. There are certain rules though - you can only steal 2x from anyone and an item can only be stolen 3x - after it is stolen 3x - the person who stole it the 3rd time gets to keep the gift and it is hands-off from others. We have a big group of friends and family so sometimes the game alone takes 2 hours but we have lots of fun.
When we first started this tradition about 11 years ago, our budget for the gift was $20 but it has gone up to $50 through the years - yup, it may sound costly but it is hard to find gifts that are truly worth it for $20. Through the years we have accumulated tons of holiday gifts that our family really enjoy like an electric griddle (which I still use), a capuccino maker, electric knife, foldable table and chairs (great for parties), and CD player. And of course we had our share of “ok” gifts - like towels, pillows, serving platters and a pizza oven that I have never even used yet and still have in the box (something from 2 years ago). The fun thing about it is that you can be creative with your wrapping - make it look grand even if your gift is not all that or try to trick people by packing it differently.
If you want to join us in our Friday Meme - go ahead and post your Favorite Holiday Tradition in your blog and link back to MommyCommunity.com. You can use our graphic below by copying the html code and pasting it in your blog post. Then, add your name and URL to the link and a comment would be super awesome too!
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