Need a family Christmas tradition

In My Humble Opinion
1

For the most part, Christmas is a slog of meals, opening presents, awkward conversations with people we see a couple of times per year at most, then getting out of dodge as soon as it seems polite to do so. This year I find myself in the position to introduce a fun tradition–at least within my family (mother, sister & BIL and their two kids, my wife, myself and when he’s older, my son). I feel confident that it would be welcome and that this group of people would happily give it a try. Problem is, I can’t think of anything really great, so I’m asking for the collective wisdom and experience of the SDMB.

In terms of limiting factors, it needs to be:

[ul]
[li]Free, or at least very cheap. I’m willing to spend some money yearly if necessary to set it up or provide prizes–say $100 or so–but I don’t want anybody else to, at least not until it’s established. Hopefully people will want to help in subsequent years if all goes well.[/li][li]Simple, since relatively young children will inevitably want to participate. Say ages 8 and up.[/li][li]Lighthearted, i.e., not intellectual, high-stakes, or involving “putting people on the spot” (Obviously if it’s some kind of game there will likely be an element of being on the spot. I’m talking about forcing people to be the center of attention and potentially embarrass his/herself with ignorance of a given subject or skill. You know what I mean.)[/li][li]Enjoyable. Like, people really look forward to it, ideally with laughter and memory-making.[/li][li]Indoors. I live in the north Georgia, so it’s not that cold, but we do have rainy winters.[/li][li]Unisex. Men, women, boys and girls will be playing. I don’t know if there are any gender-specific traditions out there, but just in case. [/li][/ul]
All I can think of are board/card games, but I haven’t played any board games except Risk, checkers, Monopoly and chess for years. Risk and Monopoly can have multiple players, so they’re possibilities I suppose, they’re just not very…traditiony. I’d like to establish something cool and unique that the kids will remember fondly and carry on even after we’re gone.

One last thing: I’m not against charitable activities–we certainly participate in those, make those a yearly tradition, and they can certainly be enjoyable–but that’s not really what I’m looking for here. This is something entirely for my family to enjoy together in each other’s close company.

Does anybody have a good tradition you’d like to share? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

2

A few of our traditions:

Buying a tree on Christmas Eve. We stopped a few years back and bought a fake tree. But the game was to go out and find the biggest tree possible on Christmas Eve for the lowest price. Interesting reactions from the sellers, who are usually left with a lot of trees.

Throwing ornaments at the tree. Originally based on my impatience with my wife’s tediously slow decoration technique, it’s turned into a game. To keep my wife happy we mostly throw the foam ball and plastic icicle things before any other ornaments are up.

Juggling the glass ornaments. The kids loved this when they were little. A suggestion, learn to juggle first.

We always buy a case of Silly String and when people come over they get barraged as they walk in the door.

Yeah, we’re weird.

3

Board games would be great, but maybe something simpler and less brain-intensive. And shorter than something like Risk.

We have a few traditional foods in my family. Last year, when my mother said “Enough!” after 50+ years of making a certain food, my niece and I picked up the slack.

And there are some traditional activities from other countries that can be fun. One friend picked up a Czech tradition of lighting a lot of candles on reading some Bible verses. (Not my cuppa, but important to her). Another (German) friend carried on a tradition of lighting a huge MFin’ conical candle.

4

On my Mom’s side of the family, they used to (still do maybe) do a jigsaw puzzle over Christmas. I can remember at G’mas house there always seemed to be a card table with a puzzle. My Aunt’s family does (or did) the SAME insanely difficult puzzle EVERy year.

This is something I’d like to do, eventually when I have room. I think it would be neat to find a new cool puzzle every year. Then glue them and back them, if for no other reason that to get them out and look at them once a year.

5

The first year I decided that presents were lame and “white elephant” gift exchanges were even lamer, I did this thing with the family that I think could be a fun tradition (it didn’t turn into one with us, but whatever).

So instead of having a gift exchange where everyone gives lame-ass $10 gifts, I had everyone bring $10 and put it into a pot. Everyone also had to bring the name of a charity that they would like to donate money to.

We all sat down at the table and went in a circle telling the name of our charity and why we want to donate. Then we played a dice game, which I THINK was Amish Dice (or Farkle, or whatever). You could also play LCR. Any game with one clear winner, actually.

Anyway, the winner of the game got to give the entire pot to their charity. Since I was “in charge” I collected the money then wrote a check to the charity from my account. I also sent the check in to the charity.

I thought this was a way better use of Christmas shopping funds and a fun activity for our group!

6

Christmas Crackers. They can be bought relatively inexpensively, and set a silly, light-hearted, chatty tone for Christmas Dinner.*

*Especially if you make a rule that everybody has to wear the hat. . .

7

We have many of them but the one I like the best is “who gets the chia pet”. At least fifteen years ago, someone gave my sister a chia pet as a joke. She kept it and regifted it the following year. The gift has been circulated around the family fpr years and the person receiving it gets custody and decides who to give it to the following year.

A game we play is “guess the stocking stuffer”. My mother fills stocking of all her adult children, their spouses and grandchildren with toiletries and other odds and ends. She has handmade everyone of them. We sit around opening, guessing what the gift is and trading one brand of toothpaste or holding up and item for “bid” trade. “Who has a bar of ivory for this irish spring?”

Since we all spend Christmas at my parent’s home, my father gets us “back” when we woke him up early as kids and starts making phone calls at 4:30am to get us to their house for his traditional pancake breakfast.

It is my “job” to buy a game for my sister and one for my mother which will be played on Christmas. We always have a good time, often making up our own rules for laughs and to make it work for all ages.

There is also the “Big” stocking. Literally the size of an average man, this thing is given to one of the grandkids and we all find big items to put in it that are dropped off at the folks well before Christmas morning. My mother decides who’s “turn” it is to get the big stocking.

Obviously we are a close fun family and do many different things. The only thing I asked for in my parent’s will was all the Christmas things so they can be kept together so the traditions continue.

8

I love creating new little traditions, and I have fond memories of some of the family traditions of my childhood. Not all of the traditons I’ve tried to forge have stood the test of time, but others have, and it’s all good fun.

Food-related traditions can be good - where the whole family gets together to collaborate in making something - My family and another family of friends have been getting together on ‘Stir Up Sunday’ (last Sunday before Advent) for the last 5 or 6 years to collaborate in making Christmas Puddings - and we’ve embellished the already-established Stir Up tradition by resolving to add a new ingredient to the pudding recipe each year (this year, it’s chestnuts).

Other food-related traditions could be good - and they needn’t be elaborate - there are any number of activities that could be turned into fun semi-competitive all-together events - make a batch of shortcrust pastry and everyone makes jam tarts or similar - and let them experiment with chocolate, marshmallows, or whatever. Or get a collection of fruit juices and syrups and have a boxing-day cocktail competition (prize for the best one, and fun trying to guess each others’ choice of components).
Or have a ‘cookie election’ where everyone chooses a recipe, then you vote on which one to make, etc.

It can also be fun to try doing something just a little bit wrong - for example, trying to have a picnic in the depths of winter - even if the conditions are horrendous, and the picnic is a disaster, you can enjoy coming back in to the warm and settling down with hot chocolate and cookies.

9

We now have that one too. And yes, we wear the hats.

We usually leave the dinner table exhausted because we laugh so much.

10

How about Spoons? Great card game, fast moving, and is always full of laughs at our house.

Sit everyone around a table, with a pile of spoons in the middle, but one less spoons than the number of people. Deal each person four cards and don’t show anyone else. Then, when everyone’s ready, the dealer takes a card from the stack, looks at it, decides whether or not to keep it. If so, he needs to discard a card from his hand to his left. If not, pass the card to his left. Guy on left does the same, rinse and repeat.

The dealer keeps pulling and choosing cards, while the cards go around the table. The goal is to get 4 of the same cards. When you do, snatch a spoon. If you see someone else grab a spoon, forget the cards and get a spoon. The one without a spoon gets an “S” and you play again.

It’s great - some people don’t even play attention to the cards and pass them along to just concentrate on the spoons. Some people grab their initial spoon like a ninja, and people keep going for minutes as they “wait” for someone to get a spoon. Lots of fun to be had when Grandma and Cousin Mikey flip their chair scrambling for the spoon that hits the floor.

:slight_smile:

11

My extended inlaw family plays table hockey (with the little men that spin and go forward and back on a stick)… My one nephew gathers up the names of participants and pulls the slips of paper out of a hat, and then sets us all up tournament style, winner plays winner until there is only one winner left. The name and year is engraved on a trophy plaque sometime after Christmas and hangs behind my inlaws’ bar. The first plaque is full so now we have two.

It’s fun, it doesn’t take too much skill, and if you aren’t good at it, there is the always luck of the puck drop!

I was just going through some pictures of my father in law’s 75th birthday. He is holding my son (who was 3 days old at the time) and he just happens to be standing in front of the first plaque which had one name on it, so I was pregnant the first year we played. I didn’t win… :wink:

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I’ve never even heard of Christmas Crackers. Is that a region-specific thing? Sounds like fun; I’ll definitely check it out.

Lots of great suggestions here that sound fun and interesting. Thanks folks!

13

Singing carols is nice.

I’m on a kick of telling people that if they love their children, they should label all of their photos. Christmas might not be a bad time for doing that. The older people could tell the younger people stories about people in the photos that they’ve never met or can’t recognize. (Grandpa was a baby!?!)

And when I think of games that everyone can play, I think of Zombie Dice. It’s simple and no matter how good you are at calculating probability, your six year old niece can whup your tush if she gets good rolls. Not very Christmasy, though.

The traditional activity is cutting out and decorating sugar cookies. There can be cookie cutters, there can be icing. There can be food color paints, there can be sprinkles. There can even be marshmallows and chocolate chips.

You have to have the right kind of area to do cookies with small children.

14

Christmas crackers is more of a UK thing, but most Americans enjoy them once they’re introduced.

The jigsaw puzzle was a tradition in our house.

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Victorian invention from England, apparently - so common and integral here, I never thought to wonder that there might be places where they are unknown.

Here in England, they typically contain (apart from the little explosive charge) a small plastic toy (often pathetically useless, but some upmarket examples have little puzzles - and the really expensive ones have jewellery etc), a paper crown-shaped hat made of coloured tissue and a little paper slip with a joke on it - traditionally a truly groan-worthy pun.

They’re usually presented as part of the place-setting for a Christmas meal, and traditionally all pulled at once - hands crossed so your left hand pulls a cracker with your right-hand neighbour, and vice versa.

16

When you say “Christmas tradition,” does it have to be on one particular day? My first thought was, maybe you can get everybody into one or two cars and drive around at night, checking out everybody’s outdoor decorations. (Okay, I realize you said “indoors,” but you’re inside of cars the whole time.)

My only Christmas traditions are, putting up the tree on the day after Thanksgiving (always a fake one - YouTube “National Artificial Christmas Tree” for some past examples), taking it down the day after Christmas, and spending most of Christmas Eve watching as many animated Christmas shows (none of which were made before the Simpsons Christmas Special, mind you) as I can on Christmas Eve.

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The ones I’ve seen in that past few years no longer have the explosive charge, just an unsatisfying “fuh.” They were probably deemed too dangerous.

If you have these, be sure to explain to people how to pop them. All too often I’ve seen people look confused and try to unwrap them like presents.

18

Last time, we went to the zoo or a local museum with everyone. It was a great way to get to know the place the relative lived, and a nice way to do something together apart from eating and gifts.

How about tackling a different card game every year? Everyone starts learning poker or whatever simpple game at the same time, you hold some tournaments acoording to ability, and the stakes are some of the gifts.

19

On first reading that scanned as you having a relative that lives in the zoo. Very compassionate to visit him there. Be sure to bring him some Christmas bananas!

Card games are our biggest holiday tradition. But this year our biggest card instigator is going to be away in Germany. I wonder if we’ll play at all.

20

Spend an evening playing Fizzbin