I am a big believer in experiences over things if you haven’t been able to tell already.
Growing up, holidays were a bit of a nightmare. My father was very abusive and would generally find some reason to yell at everyone. There was a lot of drama and storming out before the gathering was over. We weren’t free to be ourselves and had to avoid doing anything that could trigger my father, which only left us with sitting quietly most of the time.
Once my parents separated and my dad was out of the picture I began to really enjoy the holidays. Time with my family became fun and pleasant. We could be loud and tease each other and talk about whatever we wanted. Not that my family is perfect now. We sometimes have sister fights and disagreements, but overall, we all really love each other and enjoy spending the holidays together.
When I got my first job and was making decent money I started my own tradition of buying one board game each year that I would bring to our family holiday gatherings. We had a hard time playing games when my father was around because they usually led to a fight (plus we never had money to buy much of anything). With him gone we were finally able to enjoy a good game without having any sort of pressure or stress.
Board games are such a good investment in my opinion. You spend once and get entertainment for years. At some point, I stopped buying a new game every year because when combining what I owned with what other family members owned we had enough to keep us busy.
I’m thinking this year of picking up the tradition again because as we have transitioned to spending less money on eating out and going out we are hosting even more game nights than ever before. Also, Brandon and I have tried to watch less TV when it is just the two of us and are instead mixing it up with long walks and playing games at home and at the park together.
Do any of ya’ll have any suggestions of what game I should buy this year?