Well, it's been almost three hours now since it ended. Tonight (or rather, last night, since it's AM now) was my church's annual "Chinese Christmas Auction." I don't know why it's called that, and I hope there's nothing racist about that name. It's basically a large-scale White Elephant gift exchange that all the adults at my church are invited to participate in.

The rules go thusly: Everyone brings a wrapped gift. Technically it's only supposed to cost around $5.00, but there's usually a wide variety of gifts, some more expensive, some less, and often quite a few homemade items. The gifts are piled on a large table in three stacks: men's, women's, and either. Everyone receives a numbered ticket when they arrive. The numbers are drawn randomly, and whoever is called gets to choose a gift. They can either open a wrapped gift, OR "steal" a gift that has already been opened. If they open a new gift, then the next number is called, but if they steal someone's gift, then that person has the option to open a new one or steal, and so on. Once a gift has been stolen twice, it is considered "dead" and cannot be stolen again.

This is the one "extracurricular" church activity each year that nearly the ENTIRE church shows up for. It's only the adults, but still, we're talking about over a hundred people. It lasted for four hours this year. It's amazingly funny to watch normally calm, quiet people marching across the room to steal a gift while the rest yell and shout, urging them on. It's even funnier to watch people's reactions to the more unusual gifts.

For some reason, snowmen are all the rage among the women in my church, and I think I can safely say that at least 50% of the women's gifts were snowmen in one form or another. They fight each other over these things. One poor woman must have had her gift stolen from her 9 or 10 times! She kept going back up to open a new present, and everytime, it was another snowman, which then got stolen! She finally opened a scented candle, which she got to keep.

The whole thing is a lot of fun, and if you're looking for any ideas to liven things up this Christmas, this is a keeper!

Gri"we walked away with $5.00 in gift certificates to Frische's Big Boy and a new Scrabble board game!"shny