Every year for Christmas, my parents try to do something unique to make opening all the gifts a bit more fun. Most of the time they just work within a theme (last year all the gifts are labelled with our Hawaiian names after a my parents took a trip to Hawaii) or there may be some interesting gift packages (a Pirates of the Caribbean blu-ray with a giant foam pirate sword and gold doubloon candies), but this year I was completely blown away: My parents created a Christmas dice game.
We started with my dad explaining he rules. There was a die that he had relabeled with a label maker, with sides saying “card”, “stocking”, or “coal”. Each player (there were three of us) sat around a table and took turns rolling the die. While there were no losers – everyone got all their gifts – we decided whoever made it through all their gifts first was the “winner”.
Rolling a “coal” meant you lost your turn.
The tree was divided into three sections using gold ribbon. If you rolled “stocking”, you got to take one stocking from your section of the tree. The stockings had gifts like gift cards or lottery tickets (something my parents did to fill out the stockings – lottery tickets are an unusual gift for us).
Each player had a deck of cards, and rolling “card” meant you got to draw one.
There were three different types of cards:
Gift Cards
Some cards had a letter-number combination that matched a gift and a clue about the gift. These were really hard and often very obtuse (we weren’t really expected to guess most of them). Whether or not you guessed correctly, you still got to open the gift, but if you managed to figure it out, you got to draw another card.
“Give A Gift” Cards
Since we players had no idea this was coming, there were cards that simply said “Give A Gift”, letting us choose one of our presents to give to someone else. This let us make sure that my parents (who weren’t playing the game) still got their gifts along with the rest of us.
“Christmas Hug” Cards
Finally, there were cards saying “Give everyone a Christmas hug!”, where you stood up and gave everyone a hug. No gifts, but still one of our favorite cards. There may have been too many of these, but many hugs were given.
Being a lover of card and board games, I really enjoyed this. We all had a ton of fun and everything worked out perfectly. Apparently my parents had been planning this all year and despite some setbacks late in the year (life surprises you sometimes), everything went really smoothly and the planning put into it really shows. I can’t wait to see what we do next year, even if it’s the same game.
Merry Christmas, everyone!