The Club Christmas Party will be held on December 12 at our regular meeting time of 1:30 at The Galaxy Diner. You do not have to be a paid member to attend, nor do you have to be currently active with the club to attend. Each person will be able to order their choice of food from the standard menu and will be responsible for their own costs.
Our tradition is that we bring a new unwrapped gift to be donated to Toys For Tots. GrannyLinda and TopNotch usually collect those and take them to a collection point like Publix.
We also celebrate by exchanging gifts except that we do it in a slightly different way. It has many names. Crazy Christmas, White Elephant Christmas, and other names are used to describe it. Here's how it works.
Each person brings a wrapped gift. Do not put a name on it. We have set a value limit of $25, but it can be as low as you want. A piece of bubble gum or lollipop, a roll of toilet tissue, a pair of underwear (new), small tool sets, used Ignition Control Modules, a set of spark plugs, cleaning products, a cassette tape of The Carpenters. I've seen all of these in various celebrations of the same type that I've attended. Use your imagination and don't be afraid to bring a gag gift. No one will know where it came from unless you speak up.
If there are 12 persons who bring a gift, we write up slips of paper with the numbers of 1 through 12 and each person draws a number from a hat or container. The person with #1 gets first and last selection of the gifts. Once it's opened, # 2 gets to draw. But here's where it starts to get to be fun. #2 can take the gift from # 1 if they so choose and they give their number to the person whose gift they took. That person must again select a new gift to open.
This continues on through the numbers in sequence with each person being allowed to take a gift from the unopened selection, or from a person who has already opened a gift. If they take an opened gift, they give that person their number. A person can lose their gift only 2 times, then no one else can take their gift.
After all gifts are opened, the person who had # 1 gets to swap their gift with any of the other participants or they can keep what they have. Remember, I said first and last selection? The reason is that when # 1 drew their number, they had nobody's gift to take. If they want to give their box of X-Lax to a any other person and take their roll of toilet tissue, they get the last exchange.
You don't have to participate in the gift exchange. Even if you don't, we'd love to have you share our dinner and meeting. Bring the family.
