The Booth clan took me in for Christmas again this year. Dinner was at Jim's house, where Marla loaded the table with good food and everyone else brought even more goodies. Ham, turkey and prime rib were the flagships of the dinner, sided with too many salads and veggies to count. I ate till I was stuffed but I left just a bit of room for dessert. It was awful hard to pass the pumpkin rolls, nut tart, raspberry cheesecake, coconut pie, German chocolate cake and cookies, but I could only fit in one dessert, so Aunt Jean's apple pie it was!
After the meal comes the White Elephant gift exchange. As we were gathering in the living room for this, I kept hearing people ask "whose team are you on?". I couldn't remember what teams had to do with a White Elephant exchange; I forgot how passionate some of the group are about this game. According to the rules, a gift can only be stolen twice, and it cannot be stolen twice in a row. The team aspect comes into play after the first few people have made a choice. Then the deal making begins! When someone gets to choose, their team huddles together to plot strategy. If a nice gift has just been stolen, then the next person steals from someone on their own team, so that person can steal the desired gift which, as the second steal, "locks" it up. Sometimes these strategies involve 4 or 5 steals. Marla's team was the most intense about planning strategy; some of us just hoped to get lucky! My luck held and I came away with a Hillshire Farms box, and one of the most fun evenings ever.
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