Miserable Gits and Donkeys

Wondering how to give your Christmas Dinner that added sparkle, that ‘je ne sais quoi’ every aspirational host needs? Well here are two tried and tested games to play once the food has been eaten, the wine quaffed and you want to avoid that embarrassing ‘what shall we do now?’ lull:

Miserable Git
A quick-fire game where everyone sitting round the table takes turns (in order) to say something that really annoys them. It can’t be a personal attack on anyone, there can’t be a hesitation or repetition and it must be a genuine irksome thing. You can challenge on all of these grounds, and if successful the person has to drop out, eventually leaving a duelling pair. The winner should have a cardboard crown to wear and an appropriate gift to take home. There are two interesting things about this game, real miserable gits will find an excuse not to play (so you know not to invite them next year) and for the following year, everytime something annoying happens, you suddenly experience a surge of happiness thinking, ‘Must remember that for Miserable Git’.

Donkey
Take a pack of cards and sort so that you have a set of four cards (ie 4 aces, 4 queens, 4 tens etc) for each person playing. Shuffle them up and remove a card and replace it from the remainder of the pack without looking at either one.

Put matches (or spoons) down the centre of the table, but one less than there are players.

Deal the cards so that all players have four to look at (without letting anyone else see).

The idea is to collect four of the same cards (ie 4 queens, 4 tens etc). To do this everyone picks a card from their hand to discard at the same time, slams it onto the table on their immediate left, then in unison moves their hand to the right to collect the discarded one lying there from the player next to them. Then everyone takes a quick moment to re-sort and find another card to discard, and repeat. As one set of four is a 'rogue set', you never know if you can get the complete four.

Eventually someone gets a set of four, and then takes a match (this can be done quietly while pretending to carry on playing by just moving the cards along without swapping them) or very fast. As soon as one match is taken, everyone else has to grab one of the remaining ones as quickly as possible. As there is one less match than players, someone is ‘out’. They get D on a scorechart. This continues until someone spells out DONKEY when they are really out. Eventually one person is left as the winner. Be warned, don’t have anything else on the table as this game can get quite rough, with people ‘agitated’ about getting a match. The one rule is that you mustn’t pretend to take a match as this causes intense grumpiness. Best not to have long finger nails either as these can cause the après dinner lacerations that the perfect host would best be advised to avoid.

Have fun!