December 3: WWGD
“In previous years, we’d gone as a family of 4, but this year we are going as a family of 7 because we used to be a family of 8.”
Christmas for us is not a complicated affair. It doesn’t involve travel or divorced parents or bunches of wild kids. It’s just us—4 adults, 2 teens, 1 kid, a couple of dogs, and a cat who we don’t invite and who already announced he wouldn’t show up anyway.
Everyone knows where to go and what to bring—cookies, wine, and WiFi are plentiful and all is merry & bright.
Until presents.
For the adult gift exchange, we play a round of Dirty Santa (aka White Elephant) that involves unwrapping, stealing, and re-stealing presents until everyone has something and someone has something they like. But you can’t get too attached to a present until the game is over because you will likely lose it. One year we (mistakenly) included kids in Dirty Santa. It did not go well. One kid lost a gift he thought he had been given and, as a result, ran crying from the room. But since that kid is now an indifferent teenager, we’re going to try again.
But instead of Dirty Santa, we are playing Dirty Grandma.
Last Christmas was our first year without Grandma Joanna—she died unexpectantly in February of 2021. As we were cleaning out her house, we found gifts that she had purchased with the intention of giving in that year’s Dirty Santa, so we, of course, put them in the mix.
Adding her gifts meant we had an odd number of presents for an even number of people. Plus the gifts she bought were too expensive, too plentiful, and too _____ (strange, fancy, blue, fuzzy, inscrutable, whatever). They were just too… Grandma.
No matter what rules or limits or themes we (okay, I) attempted to put around the game, Grandma just bought whatever she damn well pleased. So when the four other adults showed up with a $25 Dirty Santa item as instructed, Grandma brought an IKEA bag bursting with enough pretty shiny things to make a squirrel drop his nuts and send Jeff Bezos into space. Again.
According to my sister-in-law, the only “rule” for Dirty Grandma is that gifts “follow the What Would Grandma Do theme.”
WWGD?
The easy answer: whatever she wanted. The real answer: whatever was thoughtful, generous, and kind. The hard answer: what none of us can.
If you would like to read about other Christmas traditions that Grandma would appreciate, click here.
