1 Memory Until Christmas

One of my happiest Christmas memories is of playing "steal bingo" on Christmas Eve. You may have played a similar gift exchange game. We'd each buy or make a gift and they were piled together. We've played with as few as five people and as many as twenty. Numbers are written on a slip of paper and everybody draws a number. Number one selects a gift from the pile and opens it. Number two can then either steal that gift or open a new one. No one may steal a gift back directly from the person that took it from them. Each round ends when a new gift has been opened. The later rounds can take a very long time!

From Ghosts of Christmas Past

There always seem to gifts that everyone wants and of course something that everyone hopes someone else will steal from them. The look on our niece's face when she opened the car emergency kit with a shovel was priceless! She worked several rounds singing the praises of that gift in hopes that someone would take it off her hands. Sometimes a gift will fly around the room for several minutes before a new gift is opened. The first (and only) time John's step-mother played she was quite unhappy that someone stole the gift she had opened. We have been known to cheat to insure that neither my mother nor brother-in-law gets the highest number as they are certain to end the game early. We actually do a lot of cheating when we play. Couples will team up to obtain a certain desirable gift and the adults will always make trades to insure that the kids get something they want ;-) The best part of the game is that it is always full of laughter.

From Ghosts of Christmas Past

We no longer get together with family on Christmas Eve and this year no one wanted to play the game. Perhaps next year we'll be able to bring the game back.