Holiday Game

Christmas in my home is a very special time of year. Filled with laughter and family togetherness. However we do things a little untraditional around here. Our family gathers on Christmas eve to celebrate because we are all older now, and have husbands who have families and they want to spend time with their side of the family too. Also my mother and father work in casinos so they have to be at work on Christmas morning. We do not serve a traditional Christmas meal. the tradition of my grandmother is that we have chilly so all day each house hold has a chilly cook off. So that we have different types of chilly to taste. Its fun because no one makes chilly exactly the same. My mom makes hers extra spicy with steak in it, I make mine mild with chicken my grandma makes hers with hamburger and hardly spicy at all, and my sister who is a vegetarian makes hers meatless. Then we are all assigned a different fixings to bring, one person brings corn bread another will bring onions and another cheese. So on and so on.... After we have all eaten we listen to Christmas music and visit a little bit before we each draw a number to play white elephant. White elephant is fun because it saves you a lot of money on Christmas gifts and the burden of buying someone something you are not sure they will like. Each player brings a gift that has a money limit on it. Ours is twenty to twenty five dollars, the presents are wrapped and put under the tree before the game even starts so that no one knows who brought what. After everyone is settled you have players pick a number out of a bowl. Player number one picks a present that he or she did not bring and opens it. Then player two has two options he can either take player ones present or open one of his own. Player three can also steel either player one or player two's present or open one of their own. If a gift gets stolen which usually it does, then it can only be stolen two times. You cannot directly steel it back from the player that stole it from you. Example: if player two steels player ones present then player one must either steel player three, four, or five's present or open a new one of his own. However if another player steels player one's present then player one may go back and steel his original present from player two. This is a fun game because it brings out the competitiveness in our family. Usually certain family members will team up so that someone can win what they really want. And it brings a lot of laughter to our holiday.