Easter games

Neither of my kids has much of a sweet tooth, and every year the practice of gathering Easter basket components feels a little less relevant to me. Yes, they make exclamations of delight when they see their Easter baskets awaiting them at the breakfast table, and we always manage to get some good photos during the ensuing hunt for foil-wrapped Easter eggs hidden around the house, but within three or four days, they’ve eaten their fill of chocolate, and I end up throwing most of the candy away around Memorial Day.

That plus the fact that at the age of 13, Tim spends more time helping me hide candy than searching for it, and at the age of 9, Holly practically deserves an Academy award for her talent at pretending she is convinced of the viability of the Easter bunny made Easter shopping this year a somewhat lackluster experience for me.

But just before leaving the candy aisle, I saw something I couldn’t resist throwing into my cart against my better judgment. It was a game of sorts: each package contained two implements that looked like small plastic baskets on bunny-shaped handles, with a lever that you pull to release a ping-pong ball that the person holding the other implement then tries to catch: an ersatz lacrosse game for beginners who didn’t want to have to do much running.

It was the kind of thing I ordinarily resist the urge to buy. Easter trinkets tend to be fairly one-dimensional and not very engaging to kids, and I try to avoid buying items made solely of molded plastic at any time of year. But for some reason this one looked more fun than the Easter bunny water balloon kits or sidewalk chalk sets or bubble wands. And it was potentially something the kids might do together, which is always a plus. So I bought them a set.

To my surprise, it was an instant hit. Before the kids even started looking for hidden chocolate, they had the plastic toys out of the packaging and were figuring out how to make the ping-pong ball shoot out. They played before breakfast. They brought the toys with us to Rick’s parents’ house to play during the afternoon. Holly practiced some more once we got home,, and then when we went to my parents’ house for a short visit and dessert in the evening, the kids brought the toys again and stayed out in the driveway playing with them until dusk.

In fact, the ping-pong toss game was more popular than any of the candy the kids received this year. It was one of my most successful impulse buys ever. You can’t always tell what’s going to be a hit. I still feel a little guilty about the non-recyclable plastic nature of this particular purchase, and I know that their appeal may not last long. But on a sunny Easter day when both of the kids have pretty much outgrown any excitement in candy, it was a lot of fun to see them excited about a simple game of toss-and-catch. They may get tired of it soon. But it was yet another time that I was pleasantly surprised by what caught their attention, and in this case, it made the holiday all the more memorable.

Wrapping bee: The wrap-up

I understand that “new tradition” is something of an oxymoron, as is “first annual.”

But yesterday evening did feel like a new tradition and a first annual, because it was so much fun and met a need and augmented the cheer of our holiday season. And oxymoronic or not, those factors do seem to me like the ingredients of a new tradition.

Wrapping Christmas gifts has long been a bit of a sticking point in our holiday routines. Even before we were married, Rick and I were in the habit of staying up late on Christmas Eve to do our wrapping together. This is not the best way to spend Christmas Eve. The work is tedious, the practice is superficial and the timing ensures that you won’t get to bed at a reasonable hour. We always wake on Christmas morning tired rather than refreshed, and not because of meaningful holiday-related rituals or festive celebrations running too late the night before but just because we weren’t organized enough to get the necessary chore of wrapping out of the way sooner.

For the past few years, I’ve tried to make it different, especially after we started the far more fulfilling Christmas Eve tradition of hosting my sisters and their families as well as my parents for Christmas Eve dinner. We’d go to church in the late afternoon, have a wonderful evening of conversation and food and fun – and then after the dishes were washed, it was time for Rick and me to start wrapping. That’s just not the right way to head toward the mythical hour of midnight on December 24th.

A couple of years ago, a seemingly insignificant line in an article about Christmas baking caught my imagination. The article described a variety of homemade gifts that you could prepare several days before Christmas – “So that on Christmas Eve, you can put your feet up and wait for Rudolph,” the writer concluded. I loved that image: being enough ahead of schedule that I spent Christmas Eve, or at least the part after the dinner guests left, just relaxing. Or reading. Or sleeping.

But I was never able to make it happen.

And then I had a spontaneous exchange with a friend earlier this week. “We should have a wrapping bee,” I wrote to her. “Just get together for an hour and get all our wrapping done.” Not only did she like the idea, she was available the same night I was, and so was another friend of ours.

So last night we had the First Annual New Traditional Wrapping Bee. It certainly wasn’t an hour – closer to three and a half. But we did it: we got all caught up on our wrapping. I have three or four gifts to pick up today and I can wrap those tonight and then I’ll really truly be wrap-free by Christmas Eve.

Not only was it efficient, it was such a good way to visit. I heard about one friend’s Thanksgiving trip to London and another friend’s perceptions of her son’s new school: we talked about everything from peculiar habits our mothers have to reasonable responses to bullying. We talked about books, vacations, and of course the gifts we were wrapping. We made our way through a bottle or two of Chardonnay.

So for me, the evening bore all the hallmarks of something I certainly want to make a yearly occurrence. The conversation with my friends nourished my spirit; the activity filled a necessary practical need. On Christmas Eve, I’ll put my feet up and wait for Rudolph, and I’ll think very warm thoughts about my two Wrapping Bee buddies and how great it is to start new traditions together.