Yesterday was the long awaited holiday. Carien's parents (Maria and Cees) and her sister and brother-in-law (Martine and Cees) and nephew (Thies) arrived in the afternoon.
Around 4:00 pm, Maria got a phone call from Sinterklaas telling us that he had left some gifts for the kids outside in the camper. And, oh, is Thies staying with you tonight? Yes, yes he is. Okay, his are out there, too. The kids ran out and hauled in giant bags of gifts. Wow, I thought. That's a lot of presents. But I didn't know the literal half of it.
We had dinner -- pizza for the adults and french fries for the kids, all made by Carien -- and then we heard a loud knock on the door. Even I was surprised. Who was it? Two Zwarte Pieten with five large burlap sacks full of gifts!
(Spoiler: no, Zwarte Piet does not visit every house in the Netherlands on December 5. This was a visit arranged especially by Carien, and the first time such a visit has occurred at the Uptegrove home.)
The Pieten hung out with us for probably half an hour, throwing pepernoten all over the floor and handing out gifts.
The kids went to bed and we got to work on the wine -- and started playing our game. Here's how it went down:
8:30 -- Round 1, lasts 20 minutes. All gifts are in the middle of the circle; none of us have any. Each roll of the dice means something different.
1: Roll again.
2: Give the dice to the person to your right.
3: Nothing.
4: Skip the next roller.
5: Put one of your gifts back in the pile.
6: Take a gift out of the pile.
8:50 -- End of Round 1. I have three gifts.
9:00 -- Round 2, lasts 30 minutes. Some numbers on the dice mean the same thing as in the last round, but a key difference is that 4 is now Pick a Card (each of which contains instructions as to your play). Also, 5 now means you can take a gift from somebody else.
9:17 -- I roll a four and draw a card that says (in Dutch), "Put your leg over your head. If you can't do it, you must give one gift away." Ha HA! I CAN DO THAT!
9:30 -- End of Round 2. I am left with two gifts. We are now permitted to open whatever gifts are in our possession. I open them to find a chocolate letter (traditional gift from Sinterklaas, by the way) and a giant pair of tightie-whities, which still has Martine's husband cracking up.
9:45 -- Round 3, lasts 45 minutes. The stakes are high. Now all gifts are opened, but we still trade them around like mad, trying to get rid of the fuzzy pink heart mirror, the 100 tea lights, and the origami book, and trying to acquire the pasta kit, the bath set, the cookies. A couple of the rolls of the dice now mean different things again. The wine is changing hands frequently. My underwear are not in high demand. The key to keeping your gifts is to have the most undesirable ones.
10:07 -- I have accumulated seven gifts. I have passed the underwear along. The pasta and the wine are not in my possession, so my pile is largely ignored. Things are looking up.
10:29 -- I roll a 4. I draw a card requiring me to give all my presents away. I scream in agony.
10:30 -- End of Round 3. I am the only person with 0 gifts. But I have my wine. That's what I keep saying.
They took pity on the foreigner and I ended up with a few gifts after all. So much fun, presents or no. It's a game I intend to introduce in some form at some point with my stateside friends.
I went to bed around 2:00 am, but not before I watched them haul in five more sacks of gifts -- to leave in (read: under) the kids' shoes so they have something to find in the morning.
1 comment:
I played a variation of that game once! It was called Dirty Bingo.
All of the presents were in the middle and you design your own bingo board. Someone is the caller and calls out the numbers they pull from a hat.
Each time one of your numbers is called you get a gift. When all the gifts are gone you start stealing them.
When someone calls Bingo you get to open your gifts and see if they are desirable or stuff to save for next year's round of Dirty Bingo!
Was a good time.
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