Christmas Gift!

I’m not quite sure how it started, but my wife’s family (in Newborn, Ga.) is totally over the top with this ‘Christmas Gift’ game.
In our thirties and forties we engaged in elaborate schemes to outwit whatever portion of the family was at the family farm already – we typically had to commute down to there Christmas morning with the children, and that year’s devious scheme would be hatched during the hour-long drive down. Over the years, this escalated into a philosophical ‘art of war’ discussion on the merits of quick frontal assault vs. establishing some sort of diversion and sneaking in thru some (thus) unguarded quarter.
One year we let everyone out of the car early, to scamper through the rough fields from multiple directions, while the car driver (typically me) was sacrificed to the inevitable ‘Christmas Gift’s from those inside the house. While so engaged, the house people were themselves ‘Christmas Gift’ed from multiple persons swooping in from various points of the compass.
Another year we arrived Christmas Day at the farm house, having hatched some plan, but when we got inside, the house was eerily empty – not a person or sound in evidence. I was elected to feel out the upstairs – and saw no one there either. As I turned to go back down, the house people burst out of the upstairs attic doors and ‘Christmas Gift’ed me right then and there. Then they ran downstairs and got everyone who had just arrived, stupefied.
This is not to say there was not a lot of gaming also going on over the phone – and it is axiomatic in our family not to answer the phone near midnight unless prepared to answer the phone with a resounding ‘Christmas Gift’ of our own. New electronic options merely serve to open up new avenues of pursuing the game.
‘Christmas Eve Gift’ leaked in as a surprise attack element one year and that has stayed in our tradition, also. But doesn’t have the lasting cachet of having bested other family members on Christmas day.
This year we were the house people in question. Expecting my wife’s brother and girlfriend to arrive late Christmas Eve, we turned all the clocks in the house back ten minutes. Then when were all in the kitchen near midnight visiting and finishing up some cooking, we got them! Christmas Gift!