The Snow House

[VimesandhisCardboardBoots]

Bit late for a Christmas thread I know but here goes!

DPs family have a tradition that at some point between Christmas and New Year we play a game called the Snow House.

Basically everyone buys 3 or 4 presents, generally cheap ones under a fiver (although sometimes this rule gets broken). All presents get wrapped, and placed in a cardboard box called the snow house, that has been decorated to look like a house in winter.

The presents get numbered, and then everyone picks their numbers out of a bowl. What follows then is basically a raffle. The presents get taken out of the "Snow House", the number is called, the person with that number claims their present.

So far, so dull. But once all presents have been dished out and opened, the real fun begins, half an hour of negotiation and haggling as everyone tries to get rid of the pile of tat they've accumulated, and exchange it for the bits and pieces they want. For instance, I want that set of Oven Gloves that Auntie Sue has in her pile, as mine are falling apart. However, I know that she's not going to want any of the tat in my pile. I know DD has her eye on the batman keyring I've got though, so if I can get her to swap me for the nice bath bombs she's got, I can palm them off on Auntie Sue in exchange for the Oven Gloves.

And so on. Alliances are formed, falling outs are had. People fight tooth and nail for a £1 bottle of shampoo from Tescos.

It sounds crap, but 18 years in I still enjoy it and look forward to it every Christmas. It's a genius little activity to fill the void on Boxing Day, or New Years Eve, or that random Tuesday between the two.

And yet, I've never heard of any other family playing it. It's not a new tradition, DPs great grandma could remember playing it when she was a little girl, so it's been around at least a century, so I'd have expected it to spread a bit as people married into other families etc.

I've scoured the internet and can find no mention of it being played anywhere else, so I'm throwing it out to Mumsnet. Have any of you ever played the Snow House, or anything similar?

I love this idea!

Sounds brilliant!

I'd love that!

A friend at work did this as his leaving gift - gave us all a little present, rules were if someone asks for yours you must give it, but can only swap max 2 times each! It makes secret Santa etc much more fun.

I’m sure this gets played in America, I think it’s called dirty white elephant or something like that.

This is bloody brilliant! I'm saving this and absolutely doing it next year, it sounds like so much fun! Never heard of it before. Where is your DP from originally? I've got a friend who specialises in folk tradition and is Christmas mad, so he might have heard of it!

We do a version of this, the present game, involves dice. Brilliant fun.

How do you have a pile of presents if you only have one number? It sounds like a good game! Actually a good opportunity to regift 😁

My work does this as their secret santa, doesn't call it anything, it can get very competitive!

You get a few numbers each. So if there's 10 people there, and each buys 4 presents, there's 40 presents total and so all 10 people get 4 numbers each.

It rarely works out quite that cleanly, because young kids or the oldest members of the family won't have bought anything, so the more able members buy more to compensate. So how many presents each person has bought might be a bit lopsided, but the number everyone gets is even.

We're in South Wales, think DPs family have always been in the same general area.

Excellent! I'll message him and see what he says - it'd be interesting to know how it's evolved and where it's come from. Welsh traditions are fascinating tbh, so if it is from that area then it could well make sense!

It's white elephant?

Ooh, you're not forced to swap anything in ours, if you want to keep your original stuff, you can. Think people might come to blows if forced swapping was in effect!

Just had a look at White Elephant, and yes, looks like a similar idea. Looks like White Elephant is more about stealing though, or as a previous poster said "forced swapping".

The Snow House is more about negotiation, noone has to give up their present, you've got to produce a good enough counter offer if you want their stuff.

Never heard of it before but sounds really fun! Quick query, cos my mind is already in the detail and working out which group of people we can play this with next year….how does it end? Do you come to a mutual agreement that you will stick with what you have once the negotiations have slowed down or do you set a time limit or…..?

It tends to just tail off after a while. The kids are usually done first, they're laser focussed on what they want and Granddad is far too much of a soft touch to do the hard sell on them, so they disappear to play with their new loot fairly quickly.

The adults are usually done within about 20 minutes, but it depends how many of us are there as to how complicated the wheeling and dealing gets. Usually that's the end of it but sometimes you'll get a "Come on, you don't even like Toblerone, gimme and you can have my beer" in the middle of a Christmas film four hours later.