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#0014 Christmas Countdown

Writer's picture: AlexanderAlexander

With age, I’ve become more aware of my connections to others, and I value those connections even more. I’ve got a wonderful group of friends and family that has encouraged me a great deal over the years. There’s no telling where I’d be if I didn’t have them.


Each year, a lot of us get together for a few holidays, and my wife and I are lucky enough to get to host the Christmas party each year. There’s a lot that I enjoy about hosting it, but one of my favorite parts is picking out the games we play. You’ve got to keep guest entertained after all.

Since it’s a Christmas party, the primary game we play is a dirty Santa game. I call my version Christmas Countdown. It’s a gift giving game about stealing gifts. Each year I make some tweaks to it with a dream that one day, I’ll be able to share it with the world. Maybe I can get it all together for a 2023 release, but I don’t know if that would be possible. There’s a lot of work that goes into something like that. I think 2024 is more likely. We’ll see. I make no promises.

The game has evolved to where it can support any reasonable number of players. It could potentially be played with a hundred people, but that’s just madness. I think the sweet spot would be twenty or less. The most we’ve tested is about twelve players. It’s a pretty simple card game. I won’t go into detail about how it’s played, but the concept is to use the cards you draw to manipulate the way gifts are passed around the room, hoping to get the gift you want. Some cards allow you to trade gifts while others pass all the gifts in a certain direction. Then there are cards that bend the rules some. It gets a bit of crazy, but it adds a little spice to the old dirty Santa game.


I tell myself I’m not going to do it, but every year I design new cards for the game, along with new art. It would be easier to reuse everything from the prior year, but that goes against the CODE. I’ve included some of my favorite designs below. You can see how some of the art has improved between the years. I hope you enjoy.



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