“No, you won’t son-in-law,” my aunt playfully snapped. “Pick a song, little girl.”
She stomped her foot like a child but went to grab a song from the cup. She unfolded it and judging by the smile, I figured she got something easy, but after she began to hum, I wasn’t so sure. We could only hum the lyrics. We couldn’t give hints or talk because it was against the rules. When she realized that none of us were going to guess it, she barked the answer to the song while tossing her paper at her sister who was cackling loudly at the reveal.
“I’m sorry, Ran, I don’t know what that was, but it damn sure wasn’t ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’,” my dad laughed.
“Whatever,” she mumbled. “Go, Chris.”
He reached and got his song then began humming the tune which everyone got pretty quickly, as we did with everyone else until it got around to Miranda again. She threw anothertantrum, so we moved on to the next game which was Christmas Charades.
Mel studied her paper before she began, “It’s like rain, but frozen and has a color…”
“Snow.” I answered quickly so she tossed that card and moved on to the next one.
“Auntie Trina overloads this in her house…”
“Garland!” The group shouted in unison and laughed.
Even the other team.
“Oh, bump all of you!”
“Okay, daddy this is the first thing that I got you when I got my job at Macy’s,” Mel faced her dad. “It has a picture of us inside and you keep it on your desk year round.”
“Snow globe.”
“Yep.” Mel beamed, proud that her father never put the Christmas themed gift away.
That was time for our team, so the others stepped up with Kayla being the one they’d chosen to act out the Charade.
“Okay, people do these melodies during this time of year,” she started. “Isaiah just showed us a group of Black men that were going around doing it on Cliqued.”
“Christmas carols,” Aunt Pat answered. “They just showed me and all I could think was those men were about to rob those people.”
We all shared a laugh.
“Aight, this animal helps pull the thing Santa gets around on…”
“Reindeer!” my mom shouted.
“Yeah, but he has a name that happens to be the mascot for another holiday.”
“Blitzen!” Aunt Pat yelled and Kayla gave her a look.
“Auntie, which other holiday would Blitzen be for?”
“I don’t know. I’m guessing, hell.”
“Donner,” my mother shouted.
“Mama…” Kayla groaned.
“Comet?”
“Bro.” Kayla palmed her face as the timer went off. “I think you’ve all had too much spiked cocoa.”
“It’s cupid,” I chuckled.
“Ohhhh,” they all voiced.
