Our Family Christmas Traditions #2

My husband and I have raised seven children.  With that many in the family, as the kids begin to get older, it is nice to mix things up and add some humor to some of our Christmas traditions.  Plus, some of us just have an odd sense of humor so we have to let that shine through!

Several years ago, when our youngest, Ali, was maybe 3 or so, my husband and I decided to buy "gag" gifts for each person who would be at our home on Christmas Eve.  We live in a small town in Northern Nevada and at the time we had a dollar store here, "Honk's," yes, that was the name.  Maybe some of you have shopped at one of these stores?  The store in our town closed a few years ago (insert sad face here) and I see the store in Elko closed, too.  Now we go to the dollar section at Target and to Dollar Tree when we go to the big city--Reno, Nevada.

Our gag gift party is similar to a white elephant party--you can choose to open a new gift or take one away that has been opened.  With quite a few of us there, it can get pretty intense.

My husband and I would take some time on a Saturday in December and peruse the aisles.  We had seven children to buy for (some were adults or teens), a grandma, and a daughter-in-law, as well as whoever else might be at our Christmas Eve celebration.  The key to gag gift shopping is keep it simple and inexpensive. 

Of course, you want to pick something that would be wanted (a potato peeler) and some not so much (a home pregnancy test from the dollar store).  One year my mother-in-law, who was in her 70's, opened the home pregnancy test--that was a good laugh for us all!  No one took it away from her either lol.  The most surprising gift I recall is we purchased a small plastic donkey that would "bray".  My boys had the best time with that one--they all wanted it!  We would buy kitchen utensils, knick-knacks of undetermined origin, a Whoopee cushion one year (pretty sure my youngest son made good use of it), etc.  All of the gifts would be nicely wrapped and numbered.  The family members would draw numbers beforehand and then proceed in that order to choose a gift.  The more the merrier is true with this activity!

This is just another one of our Christmas traditions and we hope that you enjoyed reading about it.  Have a Merry Christmas and feel free to comment below with one of your traditions!