Four years ago we modified a long-standing family tradition in an effort to include the younger children and spice things up a bit. Instead of the annual shop-n-swap, in which each family member would go off and buy a small gift for each other player (with time and dollar limits), we changed it into a more involved scavenger hunt. The CESH (Christmas Eve Scavenger Hunt). It was a huge success. My wife and I kicked things off, and we have then rotated the planning responsibilities each year, to my wife’s younger sister the next year, and my M-I-L and older S-I-L last year. But this year we have come round again, and it was time for my wife and I to kick it up a notch.
Two sheets of instructions? One for each team? Ha! No, we had a series of sealed envelopes, one for each player (with personal missions), as well as team instructions, a rotating schedule, and a newly appointed “Queen of Christmas,” with her own instructions. We were not fooling around.
Team A left half of their members with the Queen to receive instruction, while the other half took off to complete complimentary missions. Team B was off doing something else entirely. Team A then had to switch which members were with the Queen, and which were off missioning, until it was Team B’s turn to split up and Team A was finally reunited. It ended with all teams together again, running around trying to complete tasks while the Queen of Christmas finally opened her own envelope, revealing her final solo mission. It was a thing of beauty.
What the teams did not know was that, in addition to getting little gifts for everyone else, they were, over the course of the day, acting out the poem “A Visit From Saint Nicholas,” as well as spelling out the German word for Christmas, “Weihnachten,” with their heads. I used their head letters to create this image:
And then I compiled their videos into this full poem:
I don’t know about everyone else, but I had a great time, and I’m already looking forward to whatever my B-I-L and S-I-L plan for next year!