Christmas 2014

First of all, I hope you had just as great a Christmas as I had this year.

We spent Christmas Eve at my sister's new flat and had this lovely three-course dinner that you can see below in the picture.

In Germany, it is tradition to get your presents on Christmas Eve. Well, and on Christmas Day when the rest of the family and friends show up :-)

This year, my dear workmate told me about a tradition that has been in her family for ages.

On Christmas Eve, when they start to exchange the presents, they have found this great way of passing them to each other.

In my family, we used to give each other our presents and after about ten minutes everything was unwrapped, the living room covered in wrapping paper and that was it.

But, my workmate's family does the following:

You take a pair of dice, everyone picks a number between 2 and 12 (you can't roll a 1 ;-) ) and then the first one rolls the dices. If you roll your number, you get to choose the person who has to give you his or her present for you. If you haven't rolled your number, it's the next one's turn to roll the dice. And it simply goes on like this, round after round, until every present under the tree is given to its new owner.

That way, it is so much more fun for everyone and you get to watch everyone how they open their presents. Because you take a break while someone is opening his/her present.

As I said, it normally took us about 10 minutes and the whole present exchanging thing was over. This time, it took us over an hour. At first, my family was a bit sceptical when I told them about the "dice game" and the first 5 minutes of rolling the dices were a bit schlepping but in the end, everyone loved it and we want to make it our family tradition now, too.

Maybe it could be something for your next Christmas Day to spice it up and keep the family busy.

Kat xxx