Having a Dickens of a Christmas is Fun

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There can be a lot of waiting around at Christmas. If you are a little bored with your family sitting around during the holiday season, do what the Victorians did! Play parlor games! You can enliven any holiday gathering inexpensively and easily by playing some of the games mentioned in Charles Dickens' classic tale, A Christmas Carol and some of the other 20 plus annual Christmas stories he wrote. Charles Dickens himself was an amateur magician and actor and a great lover of games, as the numerous mentions of such in his novels and stories attest.

In a Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Present conducts Scrooge to the home of his nephew Fred, who is hosting a small dinner party. Fred's guests play a variety of popular Victorian games including Forfeits and Blind Man's Buff. Forfeits is played like this: Guests give the host a personal item such a ring, a scarf, or a pin. One person is chosen as the judge. The host stands behind the judge and holds up an item and then asks the judge, "What is the forfeit to redeem this item?" The judge, not knowing whose item is being held up, issues a command that must be performed in order to get back the item. Often the tasks are humorous and maybe even riddles such as "Leave with two legs and return with six," which means the person must leave the room and return with a chair. Another riddle would be "Sing the alphabet song backwards," which could be done either by singing starting with Z,Y,X . . . or by returning one's back on the audience and singing the song the normal way. Forfeits can be written out on paper for the judge ahead of time with the judge being told they can come up with their own forfeits, too.

Blind Man's Buff (it is called Buff, not Bluff, in England, meaning a small push or shove) entails blindfolding one person who then tries to reach out and capture another guest. The other partiers may gently push or tap the blindfolded person and then try to weave out of their way. When someone is captured, the blindfolded person must guess who they have gotten and if they do, there is a new blind man.

Charades were also vastly popular in Victorian England as were amateur dramatics. A great idea is to have a reader's theater in which celebrants are assigned roles to re-enact famous scenes from A Christmas Carol or other holiday fare. Accoutrements like scarfs and hats create a hint of costume, and if the people will get into their characters, it can make for a very fun evening.

Another popular game played at Christmas was La-di-Da. Guests sit or stand around a table, each holding a walnut in their right hand. Then they begin to chant La-di-Da, La-di-Da, pounding the walnut on the table on each beat and passing the walnut to the person on their right on every Da. Then they add La-di-da-di-da-di-da, pounding the walnut from right to left on each beat and finally passing it to the right on the final da. This is easy enough when the pace is slow but as the cadence grows gradually faster, it becomes amazingly difficult. When people mess up, they take their walnut and back away from the table until only the winner is left. Yes, nuts may go flying!

Kim's Game is a lot of fun for all ages. It is called this because it was mentioned in the novel Kim by Rudyard Kipling, another popular 19th century author. Guests have 30 seconds to look at 35 unrelated items displayed on a tray. Then the items are covered and teams have three minutes to write down as many of the items as they can remember. This is a great game for all ages.

The Victorians were very big into riddles and puzzles. In that spirit, renaming Christmas carols and asking guests to identify them by their more familiar titles would certainly be appropriate. For example, "Hallucinations of an Albino Noel" is "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas."

Other popular games from the Victorian era would be inexpensive to purchase and leave out on a coffee table like jacks, marbles, and 10 pens (tabletop bowling). A variety of card games would also be in keeping with a 19th century celebration. We have played Dickens-era games for years at our home, Kingscliff, during the holiday season, and I can guarantee people, young and old, have enjoyed them greatly.

by J. Lenora Bresler from Woman To Woman