brother.

Although we are Jewish, my family “celebrates” Christmas every year.  It’s really just an excuse for my mom to decorate the house and cook up a storm, for my dad to untangle X-mas lights for the tree and get away with wearing bad sweaters, and for my parents to appease my brother and me as kids (fine, and adults) with gifts when we are the only house on the block without X-mas lights.  We have a number of silly, secular Christmas traditions each year like taking tequila shots for Santa (whatever, we’re Texans), watching the movie “Elf,” my dad reading us The Night Before Christmas (he still does it) before we go to bed, and our X-mas Eve party yankee swap. 

x-mas w/ the roberts

we had bar/ bat mitzvahs. i swear.

The Roberts family spends quite a bit of QT together over the-holiday-that-really-isn’t-ours.  We get along well, but family time can be tiring.  So, every Christmas Day we spend hours not necessarily talking, but instead, strategizing and plotting how to destroy each other in our traditional Scrabble tournament. 

Even our family dog, Charley, gets to play…

good boy

We are all terrible, of course, except for Charley…  I always try to throw in acronyms and Spanish words.  My brother makes up words all together.  My mother only ever uses three letter words.  And, my dad always loses his glasses and has to ask us to tell him what letter is on the tiles.  It’s kind of a mess, but it’s tradition – and we love board games.   

oooooh, it's ON!

We can’t play Scrabble ALL day, though, so we usually incorporate another game into the mix.  I used to make them play my old favorite standby until I was about 20 or so and everyone finally refused.

So, we moved on to Sorry.  I hate this game.  And let me tell you something, I am NEVER sorry when I send your “man” back to home.  Never. 

not sorry

Last year, I tried to incorporate my new favorite game, Catch Phrase, into the mix.  It ended up stressing out my dad – and we all had had one too many eggnogs to make any sense anyway.  Shame, though.  Love a good game of Catch Phrase.

However, this year I have the perfect game.  BALDERDASH.  We played it over Thanksgiving with Slick’s amazing family and it was a blast!!  I think it might even move into my #1 board game slot…  I can’t say for sure – we’ll just have to see.

The object of the game is to invent a phony definition for each word in play that could be mistaken by the other players as the correct definition.  Each player writes down a fabricated definition for the given word and returns it to the player whose turn it is.  The player reads all of the fake definitions along with the real one.  Players try to identify and choose the correct definition for the word in play.  The words are insane.  Here are a few examples:

Gaberlunzie:  A wandering beggar.
Lagniappe:  Small gifts given in New Orleans.
Sialoquent:  Spitting while talking.

People made up the most ridiculous meanings for these words.  Slick couldn’t keep it together when reading the definitions, so he used a pillow to cover his face when he read them during his turn.  It was pretty silly – but absolutely hysterical!

Balderdash is perfect for a group like my family – all smarty pants who don’t take ourselves too seriously.  I just bought it at Target in Atlantic Station and can’t wait to possibly completely replace Scrabble as the traditional Christmas Day game this year!

we've been perfect angels, santa...

xx, L