Grand Thoughts: Making memories at a Dirty Santa gift swap

Lancaster family members enjoy a friendly game of Dirty Santa at their annual holiday party. Taking someone's gift during the game can be a friendly, and hysterical, struggle.
Lancaster family members enjoy a friendly game of Dirty Santa at their annual holiday party. Taking someone's gift during the game can be a friendly, and hysterical, struggle.

Though Christmas 2018 is history, the memories are here to stay.

My family has many holiday traditions we treasure, including a new one - the Dirty Santa game - we started just three years ago at a family Christmas party, an event my immediate family hosts for my late father's side of the family, the Lancasters.

Dirty Santa is a gift exchange where each person who plays has to contribute a gift in order to receive one. Sometimes you end up with a very nice gift, and sometimes you're left with something nobody wants - a book about Robert Redford, for example.

Our rule for gifts is that you either bring something you already have or you shop for it at a thrift store.

When we started playing the game three years ago, only the adults played. Because we had so much fun, the children wanted in on it, so the next year they brought gifts as well.

The way we play the game (we may have made up our own rules) is each participant is given a number. The person getting No. 1 goes first by selecting one of the wrapped gifts placed in a pile in front of the Christmas tree. The person who drew No. 2 can either take away the gift the first person chose or select a different one from the pile. If someone chooses your gift, you pick out another wrapped gift. This process goes on until the last person either keeps the last gift or selects one from someone else.

Meanwhile, though, there's a lot of snatching, screaming, laughing and borderline crying. You don't want to give up something you like.

We play the game for what seems like hours. It's exhausting but so much fun.

This year, the most coveted gift was a huge wicker basket filled with goodies, including candles, a book and everything you need to grow your own alfalfa sprouts. Evie, my 8-year-old granddaughter, was second from last to choose, She immediately grabbed the basket from someone who had already grabbed the basket from someone else.

Everyone wanted the basket.

But there was one person left to choose a gift - the oldest person in the family, Aunt Delores, 82. When it was her turn to make the choice of taking the basket or choosing the remaining wrapped gift, Aunt Delores slowly and deliberately walked toward Evie, who, by now, was holding onto the basket for dear life. She and Aunt Delores had a staredown, neither one blinking or making a move.

The room was quiet.

Would or wouldn't the octogenarian take the basket from a child?

We all knew it was a possibility. So did Evie. Last year, Aunt Delores took a $10 bill (yes, someone wrapped a $10 bill) from my then 11-year-old granddaughter, Tilleigh. While the majority of us laughed at our aunt's audacity of taking the money from a child, Tilleigh was borderline upset. But, hey, no mercy, right? We warned the kids. (Aunt Delores had every intention of giving Tilleigh the money later, unbeknownst to Tilleigh or any of us, for that matter. She did give Tilleigh the $10 and a hug. Tilleigh, who had truly been a good sport, took the money without reservation.)

Evie, rightly so, did not trust Aunt Delores. She was not going to willingly hand over the basket without protest. As Aunt Delores slowly reached for the basket, she suddenly turned around and grabbed something from someone else.

Evie sighed. Everyone else laughed.

Oh, the drama.

Honestly, it's our favorite part of the party.

I began hosting this family celebration for my father's side of the family a couple years before my father died in 2008. We had spent nearly every Christmas Eve of my childhood with these family members. We always had a big dinner, exchanged gifts and sang carols. It was one of my favorite nights of the year.

But as we nieces and nephews grew up and had families of our own, we stopped having the party. A few decades passed with grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles and even some cousins passing away.

When my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in his late 70s, I decided to revive the family Christmas event and host it at my house as a means of getting us together before my father died. We ended up having so much fun that I've made it an annual event at my house. We cousins, most of us in our 60s, have vowed to keep it going. And we will. We're all about family, traditions, memories and lots of laughter.

Email Karen Nazor Hill at khill@timesfreepress.com.

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