Christmas traditions

[Dead Cat]

This tradition started just a few years ago, with most of the kids in high school or older, but my Dad's been creating scavenger hunts that lead to whatever our biggest and most impressive present is. They're usually 1-or-2 line riddles or lame jokes or memories that lead to the next location and clue. I guess after Santa phased out, he had too much time on his hands. We love it, but this may be losing traction--with 6 people to do clues for it's a lot of work, and many of the locations are being used over and over again.

You can always have a skein of yarn for each person that is woven throughout the house that has to become untangled to get to the cool present.

[Dragon Lady]

With the benefit of having a very bright spiderweb to walk through. Bonus points if you get to your present without touching any yarn with any part of your body outside of hands. consider it ninja training.

[Portia]

I view it with a healthy dose of irony/self-deprecation. If you acknowledge such qualities, then other people can't beat you to it. I don't think I'm better than other people, but I do see how other people could get that impression. I'm more self-aware than I was in my youth, but I still have very specific tastes.

Don't people call themselves "food snobs" and like terms?

[Whistler]

sometimes I call myself a snob, because I dislike things other people dislike, and if I call myself a snob then they know I'm aware of this discrepancy (literature comes to mind).

[Genuine Article]

Also, a Norwegian tradition that started when I was a teenager. Christmas Eve while we sleep, my mom hides a pickle ornament on the tree. The first person to spot it Christmas morning gets a prize. We've since all got our own pickles, so I did it with Yellow's family last year. It was really fun just waiting for it to be noticed. "Why is there a pickle on our tree?"

We do a pickle hunt every year. My dad has three pickle ornaments, a big one and two little ones (plus a trick one that yodels). Sometime Christmas day after we've done presents and things we all wait in the family room while my dad hides them on the tree in the next room. Then we all file in with our backs to the tree and when he says go the hunt is on. There are eight of us, so there's a lot of jostling and it gets pretty frantic. We're lucky if we don't break any ornaments actually.

Back when there was just one pickle it used to be that whoever found it got an extra gift. Only with seven girls and one boy my parents once made the mistake of getting a book on how to french-braid hair, assuming one of us girls would win it, and wouldn't you know it, my brother found the pickle that year. So now whoever gets the big pickle wins $5 and the two small pickles are worth $1 apiece.

[Dragon Lady]

Our pickle prize is usually candy. The one year my sister and I came to blows (almost. But there is a picture of her almost choking me to death) the prize was a box of raspberry chocolate sticks. Dark chocolate. Totally worth the fight. But only because I won. And then I shared them with her. Because I'm nice.

[Katya]

I view it with a healthy dose of irony/self-deprecation. If you acknowledge such qualities, then other people can't beat you to it. I don't think I'm better than other people, but I do see how other people could get that impression.

Irony/self-deprecation/self-parody I understand. Carry on.

[thatonemom]

Saw this today: Two brothers get a picture with Santa every year, for 30 years.