So, after partying until 4am at the “Warten auf’s Christkind” on December 23rd we went home and caught up on some sleep. We spent the next day taking care of some things and went to my Dad’s for a traditional Christmas dinner (Hmmm…. venison). Delicious! We opened many bottles of wine and presents and had a good time.
On December 25th we went back to my Dad’s where we met with the whole extended family. We also participated in a fun game of giving trashy gifts. Yes, you heard right “giving trashy gifts”. The whole thing is called “Schrottwichteln” (where “Schrott” = “trash” and “wichteln” = “Secret Santa”). It’s like a mean Secret Santa where everybody brings one horrible kitsch-y thing or just a gift they received and really didn’t like. Then you use dice to determine who gets which gift and voila, everybody ends up with a trashy gift. It was so much fun! And most people actually ended up with things they kind of liked – after swapping back and forth. Marco got an old set of salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, mustard holders from my grandma. I got a tea glass from my Dad that doesn’t transfer heat (something about vacuum between two glass walls). My sister was very excited about a water carafe that she used to give everybody white wine with that night (probably overly excited because she had much of the wine herself). And on and on it went. I totally recommend it. Let’s call it “Mean Secret Santa” and see if it catches on in the US.
We spent December 26th, still a Christmas day in Germany, with my mom’s extended family. I had lots of good food and caught up with my cousins and aunts. Very nice! And after everybody left that night, my cousin (whose house we had been at) went to the hospital and had her third baby 
Isn’t that something?! You host a Christmas party, you go into labor and 30 minutes labor you have your baby. Wow! I can only say “Hut ab” (i.e., “hats off”)!
The next day, we caught our next flight: on to Rome for New Year’s Eve.
In the meantime, here are some pics from Christmas in Germany: a christmas tree (yes, real tree with real candles), one of the trashy gifts (a jewelry holder), cheese, a modern advent wreath, and more snow.
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We do that too!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange
Oh no! You already have a word…. I was hoping mean/shitty/trashy Secret Santa was gonna catch on
Well, personally, I prefer Shitty Santa! So much more descriptive than White Elephant:)
Let’s go with Shitty Santa then
Yes yes, but shitty santa would offend the family-oriented parties. Not to mention the then unloved elephants.
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Well, how about two names? White Elephant for the kid’s partys and Shitty Santa for the adults.
Why White Elephant anyways? Is there a reason it’s called like that?
We call it Yankee Swap, White Elephant or Dirty Santa, and we play it a little bit different than you. A few years ago, though, my uncle went CRAZY and we haven’t played it since. It’s serious business!
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Yankee Swap? Hahaha! Awesome! There were a lot of rules in ours: You go round and round the table and throw dice. You throw a two, the gifts go two to the right, you throw a three, the gifts go three to the left, you throw a six, and you can open one. Then it goes on for a predetermined time and when time is over, you keep the gift you have in front of you or find somebody to exchange it with
Ok, that doesn’t actually sound complicated, but it was… partly because we were already drunk I guess 
Soooo, you got me curious. What happened with your uncle??