Christmas with our adult children (and their children) still took a lot of planning to make sure we included the must-do traditions (mostly revolving around food) and got everyone a gift or two. As our family grows and dynamics shift, though, our Christmas traditions continue to evolve. This year, amidst the laughter and planning, we introduced a new tradition: the family trivia game. It was an instant hit.
Christmas for us is loud and boisterous. We now have 37 living members of our family, with kids, their spouses/fiancées and grandchildren. Most of them — 29 — were able to come to our home on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I’ve been using a spreadsheet for weeks and stressing about the Gantt chart I need to keep the Christmas “stuff” straight and in the end, no one got forgotten and it was one of the most fun Christmases we’ve had in a while. The laughing began with the white elephant game.
White elephant gift exchange
For a few years now, we have done a “white elephant” gift exchange, with most of the gifts coming from a dollar store. This year, one of our daughters started laughing as the present she brought was chosen. Then, the gift opener started laughing, then the people closest to her. The hot pad and kitchen mitt set were covered in hundreds of tiny faces of one of my other daughters. A new part of family lore is born.
Since Christmas, I’ve seen a video where the family gifted each other things from Grandma’s house. Great way to downsize! Some of our favorites over the years have been dollar store pregnancy tests (of course opened by one of the boys), dollar store microphones, toilet bowl candy and exploding reindeer poop. We’re classy like that.
Gifts and food
Gifts and food are a key part of holiday traditions for us. When it comes to gifts, we do a Secret Santa exchange every year and then everyone gets presents from my husband and myself, all the same dollar amount for kids and half that amount for grandkids. We tried to go light on “stuff” and heavier on consumables — no need for more things that could become clutter. We also went through some Christmas ornaments that were spared from our 2005 house fire and send them home with the now-adult kids they belonged to. Baby’s first Christmas, 1987? My son’s kids were impressed. An angel ornament for the year my daughter became an angel? I’m keeping that one.
We used to do homemade gifts for the Secret Santa, but stopped it when it became clear that mom (me) was doing an awful lot of work on awful lot of gifts. Now that the kids are grown, though, maybe it’s time to bring that back. One of our daughters asked me to teach her how to sew this Christmas season and made a pair of pajama pants for her toddler son and two aprons! And, for the first time in more than six years, I did some sewing of my own. Turns out sewing a couple of things is much less stressful than trying to sew 35 things.
I was reminded how much food we used to go through with multiple teenagers in the house at one time (11 was our peak), as the group chowed through chips, dips, cookies, candies, our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of tostadas and tapioca pudding and then the 25-pound turkey and some fixings on Christmas Day. There were very few leftovers to speak of, which is just fine by me. As we snacked and ate our way through the day, we also piled in the living room for what was one of the funnest parts of the celebrations.
Family trivia for the win
An instant hit and definitely a new tradition was playing two games of family trivia. Our daughter who is a brand-new junior high teacher this year created the games using an online quiz platform, then we all signed in with various devices. Over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we answered nearly 100 questions about our family, learning, laughing and arguing maybe a teeny bit over family lore.
The game included questions like “Who was the first one to break a bone?” and “Who got bitten by a horse in horse therapy?” One question our daughter wrote was “What was the most common phrase the kids used growing up?” Answer: “Don’t tell mom!” There was some mild arguing over whether “BYU” was an umbrella term for all 3 BYU campuses (it’s not, she thought it was), and some more laughing when remembering how one daughter shut down an entire girl’s camp because she came screaming into camp saying she had seen a bear (it was a moose.)
I’m already thinking about how to use family trivia games as a way to keep connected with those who don’t live nearby. Just a few questions, once a week? Once a month? Maybe birthday trivia on someone’s birthday, or couple’s trivia on an anniversary. The possibilities are endless.
As our family grows and spreads across the country, traditions like these keep us connected. This Christmas was not just about the food or the gifts but the laughter and the stories we shared. The funny white elephant gifts and spirited games of trivia help us remember the love and the shared history that binds us as a family, in all our imperfections.
Originally published in the Deseret News
