Christmas trick noun An act or prank performed rarely, such as once a year at Christmas.
1855 (in 1956 Eliason Tarheel Talk 265) (Wilkes Co NC) Papa waded the river for his Christmas trick. 1862 Neves CW Letters (Jan 9) I woold be glad to see you & hear you tell some of your christmas trick as you have taken it wher you did never beforure I recon you had a big time.
—Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English
In a recent video I shared the definition above and shared a couple of Christmas tricks from our family.
One of them happens every year as we open presents as a family. The girls take great delight in using alias names on the from portion of the tags. Most often it’s someone famous like Travis Tritt or John Wayne. Sometimes it’s someone we know from the down the road. It tickles them to death to trick everyone with the funny names and everyone else enjoys it too.
A couple of other tricks came to mind after I finished the video.
One is the tradition of Belsnickle. I had never heard of it until I started blogging. You can read more about the strange tradition here.
Another Christmas trick I came across several years ago was a Christmas game of picking raisins from burning brandy and eating them while they were on fire. Doesn’t sound like much fun to me!
Here’s the details from the Online Etymology Dictionary.
snapdragon (n.)
popular name of a common flowering garden plant, 1570s, from snap (n.) + dragon. So called from fancied resemblance of antirrhinum flowers to a dragon’s mouth. As the name of a Christmas game of plucking raisins from burning brandy and eating them alight, from 1704. (also from 1570s)
As I said that doesn’t sound like much fun to me, but I’m sure it made for a very exciting experience for those participating and those playing!
Last night’s video: Chewing Cinnamon Oil Soaked Paper, Old Games, & The First Christmas Party.
Tipper
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I would terrorize my telling the niece that Christmas trees were the home of ‘Gift Worms’ that borrow into gift boxes and consume the gift. I would plant a couple of empty wrapped boxes with small hole and would make a show of opening them.
JD-that sounds like something Matt would do 🙂
It’s not a gag or trick, but my family grew to considerable size by the ’60s. Nine kids each had spouses. Most had children; I have 16 nieces and nephews. You can do the math and try to calculate how many gifts it would take for all the adults to give each other and all the kids a gift. On Christmas morning, before presents were passed out to recipients, we chipped in a dollar with our guess as to the number of presents that would be handed out. The winner was the closest to the actual count without going over. The first pot I remember was paid out for just over a hundred gifts. Over time it grew to over 200. To keep the ‘game’ honest, we had 3 different people keeping tallies.
I saw a video on the Snapdragon Game from Tasting History on YouTube. Fascinating that parents let their kids eat flaming raisins. My kids always try to trick each other by hiding gifts in boxes of cereal then wrapping or something along that line. If you can pull it off you get bragging rights all year.
The idea of signing alias names on the “from” part of a gift tag sounds like lots of fun. It may be fun to do to my grown children…instead of mom and dad, we could sign from: “The Griswolds”. LOL. It’s been so enjoyable watching all yours and the Presley girls videos concerning Christmas. I also love the stories that you read. Thank you Tipper. Merry Christmas everyone. It won’t be long now.
Howdy everyone, it’s just me, little ole Donna. Santa Paws came today for all the fur babies, they were over the moon when I started unloading all the food and presents! Mr Big, a 10 year old min pin was dragging off a presents while the rest of the pack wasn’t watching!! My daughter and I LOVE LOVE LOVE our babies!!
This Christmas a lot like past Christmas, we decided to again not get presents for the family or each other, Soooo we have a local nursing home and they did a great presentation on their clients. Each client was asked what they wanted for Christmas and they listed 3 items.
Well, needless to say the lady we got, her name is Betty, the last of her gifts came in today!! Yahoo…this has been so much fun getting way more than she asked for. Presents has to be there Monday the 16th. I was sweating as the deadline was fast approaching.
Randy, your absolutely right that this is one huge online family. And yes, see you have a HUGE sense of humor!! First the pig lips and now the doll….way to funny!! Lol
Dear Sadie, I’m praying for you that your needs are met with all you need and more!! Bless you and your family.
Got to go, Tipper and Matt and the girls and new grand babies have a wonderful weekend and tell Granny hi for me.
I really like the idea of the “to – from tags” getting different, fun names. I’m going to do it for my gifts I mail this year and see if they notice. LOL
I never encountered the Christmas trick idea growing up, but I pulled one as a teenager. I gave a guy a pig’s tail as a gag gift, all wrapped and tied wth a ribbon. There was one fun custom we observed: You called out “Christmas Eve gift” to the first person you saw on Christmas Eve. No gifts were ever given though. It was purely and exercise in holiday fun.
In our family we never did Christmas tricks but these sound awfully fun! I think this year my granddaughter is getting a gift from Katy Perry and Taylor Swift (her favorite singers)! It’ll be fun to watch the expression on her face, lol.
Tipper, I enjoy reading your blog every morning but I also love the comments from your BP&A family. It would be fun to have the opportunity to meet each other, what a great time we would have!
I like the idea of using fake names on the tags. I think it’s hilarious! I can’t think of any tricks played except the time I was in high school and my parents sent me into their bedroom to get something and by the way, was dark…so when I turned on the light, a big man dressed up as Santa was in the room!! I couldn’t have screamed any harder had it been the devil himself. Not funny until many years later.
One year right before Christmas, Ma Skinner was spending the night with us. She asked my Daddy if he would take all of us serenading. She was born in the late 1800s and this custom was one she had loved when she was a girl. Back then, a horse drawn wagon was filled with loose hay, and a group of people would dress up in costumes and visit neighbors. The wagon would be left a good ways from a house and everyone would pile out and try and sneak up. It didn’t usually work because everyone had hunting dogs, and it was their joy and job to bark and bay if anyone invaded their yards. Serenading resembled halloween in some ways, because the object was to knock at a door, and without saying a word, indicate that something good to eat was expected. If there was nothing offered, then tricks were expected, such as filing in and laying on people’s beds, or sitting in laps.
We still had a horse and wagon back then, but daddy didn’t want to drive it at night, so his old pickup truck had to surfice. There were ten of us, and we used everything from blacking from the outside wash pots, old rags, or jute sacks for costumes. We climbed into the back of that old truck, and almost froze going from house to house in our community. Everyone laughed and played along as if they remembered the custom, even though it wasn’t done much in the mid 50s.
Does anyone remember this Christmas custom?
I don’t recall my family ever doing any of those things. I not recall my mom ever telling us anything of the things you wrote about today. I missed the video last night. I’ll have to go check my notifications so I can catch up.
Y’all have a blessed day!
Perhaps the person consuming the flaming brandy raisins has had a few swigs from the brandy bottle, or spirits bottle. Definitely a different Christmas trick.
Merry Christmas to all.
I agree, the idea of eating flaming raisins doesn’t sound like much fun. Or safe for that matter. Although the brandy soaked raisins might be tasty, after they’ve been extinguished of course. lol!
Setting fire to brandy and picking raisins out really got me going first thing so I laughed and laughed. Through the years there have been gag gifts given at Christmas and the older I get I think laughter over simple things is priceless. Once great aunt Louise from OHIO ( low on both ends and hi in the middle) decided to “culture up” us “hilljacks” as she referred to us. She took perfectly good styrofoam cups and put them in the oven thus making them miniature. She called them nut cups for showers etc. Well my aunts from Roanoke took those cups when she wasn’t looking and stuck them on their eyes, nose, chest and we laughed like crazy. I still lack culture but I know a shrunken Styrofoam cup ain’t it in my estimation…. Lol God bless you one and all and have a very merry day!!!! I have a bedroom that’s really nice now and a driveway with gravel and stabilized where a hickory tree (rootball and all) fell during HELENE. I also have 4 of 6 hickory tree root balls dealt with and gone. The other 2 are my neighbors but it’s my babies now… Now if I can get a roof and some outer walls fixed, I may be walking in high cotton so mommy used to say…
I’d eat the entire lot of brandy soaked raisins for my arthritis.
I just read the old blog from April 16, 2011 about a dog being your best friend. When our present dog Rebel ( half Walker and half Lab) was a little less than a year old, he swallowed some string from one of his toys that blocked his intestines and had to be operated on to remove it. It was touch and go for several weeks as to where he would live. He lived and my wife brought and gave him a cupcake home from her work and gave it to him on his birthday which happened to be Father’s Day. She didn’t give me anything on my birthday, I teased her unmerciful about loving the dog more than me, it was all in fun. She brought me a cupcake the next year on my birthday. We did not make a big deal out of our birthdays and such but did for our children and grandchildren. I once read if you don’t believe a dog is your best friend, lock your wife and dog up and then see which one tries to kiss you when you let them out. When my wife died, Rebel grieved for her for more than a month.
My mother in law’s family would play a game called snap at Christmas. She taught it to me one year. I don’t quite remember all the details, but it involves grabbing up as many tiny items from the tabletop as a player can before another player “snaps” them up, sometimes in a violent motion. It can get a little dangerous! Her parents were old order Mennonites, so I wonder where it could’ve come from.
Merry early Christmas! Meg
Praying for your family❤️
In my family we never played tricks or gave gag gifts, money was short and it was sometimes hard to just give a true gift. In my wife’s family we would give gag gifts. The burning raisin trick sounds like something a bunch of drunks would do. In my lifetime in my family or my wife’s family and I am talking about our immediate and extended family, alcohol was never included in any type of get together or celebration. We didn’t need it to have fun or enjoy being together, maybe this is one reason they was never any madness or squabbling at our get togethers and we all got along and enjoyed being together as much as we did. One gag gift or trick I played on my teenaged nephew one year was this…He had begin to learn there was more to girls than pigtails and he kept going on about wanting Santa Claus to bring him a doll that year, so being the good uncle that I am, I bought him a doll, wrapped it up and gave it to him and signed the name tag Santa Claus. He still reminds me of doing that to him from time to time.
I want to thank everyone for their comments and the humor I had with some of you over the last couple of days. It has picked me up and made me feel better. Even though me going west to meet Donna and some of the other members was joked about, I wish it was possible to have a get together and meet one another. The BP&A, Tipper, her family, and the members of it are a blessing to me. I do think of us as being an online family. Some of y’all see things in me I don’t see, such as having a gift for writing.
Randy-wouldn’t it be fun for the BP&A family to have a picnic and bring our own BigMac!!
Yeah it would, even better would be to have Tipper cook some of the recipes she is always posting. I have gained 10 pounds over the years just from reading them!
A brother of mine gave one of our sisters a pair of cow eyes from an abbatoir where he lived. The gag was that for years we all teased her calling her ‘cow’ eyes because she had big brown eyes.