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Friday, December 24, 2004

Chronicle of a Wonderful Night

When you're a kid, you yearn for Christmas to get your presents. Presents light up your life because they're more of something. And more of anything is good. Preferably toys. Books are sometimes nice, but other times scorned, depending on the person. Boys especially tend to dislike clothes as Christmas presents due to the illusion that they replace something that had the potential to be a GI Joe or something.

But part of the process of maturing, it seems, is gaining an appreciation for life as opposed to things. An appreciation for those around you, and not the things they give you. The whole 'it's the thought that counts' philosophy really is true. At least in my family.

So tonight wasn't really about the gifts. It was about the time we spent together. And we've been enforcing that for my entire life in a very simple way. When it's time to open the gifts, it isn't a mad rush to see if you can find yours and rip the wrapping off it. We always come up with something interesting to do to get to the gifts.

For the last sixteen or so years, it has been a fairly simple game. Each person gets a turn. The person gets blindfolded, spun around a few times for good measure, and then goes for the gifts (or not, depending on whether they're disoriented enough). The first gift they touch, they give to the person it's for, and that person opens it. Then it's the next person's turn.

Although that was a fun game, this year we decided to change it a little. The original idea was to play a simple card game. The winner would go and toss a coin from a few meters back at the presents. If the coin ended up on a present, that would be the one that would get opened. If it didn't, then the first present it touched would get opened. Unfortunately, the simple card game was rather long...

Fortunately, the first present opened was my younger brother's, and it was a game of charades. With such a resource, what could we say? We decided that we would play charades. The winner of the round would go toss the coin, and then would be the one doing the charade next. It took us over an hour and a half to get through all the presents. It might have been better had it taken a bit longer, but that's okay.

In the end, I got some wonderful presents. That's not the important thing, of course, but what the hell, I'll mention them anyway :).

  • Leather gloves (brown, and not shiny, so I won't look like the Phantom of the Opera) from my parents.
  • A very nice belt (black) from my parents.
  • The Jay-Z <-> Linkin Park collaboration from my brothers (very cool).
  • A book (Megawatts and Megatons) from my parents.
  • The three LotR Extended Edition DVDs (from my brother and myself - they were under the Christmas tree to see if we could add a nice big present).
Great Christmas :) Merry one to all others!

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