Daily December Note #30:

My family was/is big on games. Board games, card games, group games, even solitaire. We enjoyed them year-round, but during the holidays they were “out” in stacks in a few different places throughout the house. Anyplace there was room for a few to gather, there was likely a stack of games at the ready. Often, someone would receive a new game for Christmas, giving us a reason to try it out, but the old favorites never really went away. A few I remember playing year after year (by no means an exhaustive list): Racko, Quinto, Operation, Scrabble, Boggle, Old Maid, UpWords, Rook, Lie Cheat & Steal, Monopoly, Pictionary, Sorry, Chinese Checkers, Checkers, Uno, War, Othello, Acquire, Tripoley, Balderdash, Taboo, Zonk, and our forever favorite - a game called Pyramid Cards. I’d venture to say that my extended family (four generations so far) has played this one game more than any other when we are together. It was a small business venture when it was created and is now out of print. I have purchased it on ebay twice - one for each of my two kids - and I continue to watch for it. I’m glad we didn’t ONLY play games during the holidays, but I’m also kind of in love with the memory of the hours spent this way because we were together, because we had the time, because one can only watch so much football. I hope this tradition outlives me.