Many years ago my mom started a new Christmas Eve tradition called Crazy BINGO. Basically she’d wrap up some cheap gifts (candy, gag gifts, little trinkets) as well as one “grand prize” of $10-$20, and everyone would play BINGO (or more recently Uno Attack), picking out a gift when they won. The fun was trying to guess which package contained the best gift, and stealing it when you won as you had the option to take a new gift or take someone else’s (and then they could choose to do the same). The game play would end once everyone was in possession of a gift. Then the gifts would be opened and people were free to swap with one another. Of course no one ever swapped the main prize, especially when it was $20!
This tradition almost ended last year because my mom hasn’t been feeling well and didn’t want the hassle of finding the gifts. I happily took over because it’s one of the things I look most forward to every year. The main prize is now less than $20 as I don’t want to blow my holiday budget, but I’ve still been having a lot of fun finding interesting inexpensive items for this game. Dollar Tree, the One Spot at Target, and Five Below are all great places to snag some decent stuff without spending a lot. In all I spent under $20 this year to keep this tradition going. That includes the “grand” prize of a $5 Target gift card I scored for free during one of my epic shopping trips.
While I can’t share the items I purchased as of this writing since some of participants will likely be reading this, I can share with you a quick photo I took last night after wrapping them.
There are a total of eight gifts since we’re expecting eight people to be present for the game.
There’s a good chance I’ll have completely forgotten what’s in which package by the time Christmas Eve rolls around so I can enjoy the game just as much as everyone else. Or I can mess with everyone and covet the wrong gift in an attempt to throw them off the trail. Muhahahaha!
What fun traditions do you participate in during the holidays?
