Thanksgiving was great and all, but now it’s Christmas time – my favorite time of year. This is the time of year where I get to go crazy decorating the house to look like Christmas threw up in it (in the prettiest possible way, of course). Then, there is the Christmas shopping. Despite my dislike for shopping, spending hours in the holiday-decorated stores, trying to find the perfect gift for everyone in my family is actually fun for me. And we just cannot forget about Christmas songs! I like to drive around to look at Christmas lights in my pajamas with some hot chocolate jamming to some jingles.

And finally there is the Christmas tree. My family and I spend a night together put the tree up (we have a fake one) and putting all of the ornaments on it while dancing to the Nutcracker soundtrack (or at least attempting to dance). As the final touch, we hang a big bunch of candy canes all over the tree.

The thing is, we like to decorate the house and the tree right after thanksgiving, so what do you do to keep yourself in the holiday spirit for the next four weeks while waiting for Christmas?

You play The Candy Cane Game.

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What you need:

• A Christmas tree with ornaments
• At least one box of regular sized candy canes
• A minimum of two people or more

How you play:

Player one closes eyes and faces away from the Christmas tree while player two takes the candy canes and distributes each of them deep inside the tree, hanging on the branches. The goal is to hide the candy canes as best as possible on the branches using the ornaments as obstacles. When player two finishes hiding the candy canes, player one turns around and tries to find all of them. The search is timed, and the goal is to beat the other players time. If there are more than two players, then the remaining players join player one in the search for the candy canes. Whoever finds the most candy canes after all of them are found wins the game.

Rules:

• A player cannot place a candy cane too high in the tree for the other player(s) to retrieve.
• Hints as to where the candy canes are located in the tree are not allowed.

Back ground:

My siblings and I came up with this game years and years ago when we were impatient for Christmas to come. Ever since then, The Candy Cane Game has been included on our long list of traditions we do around Christmas time.