Seven super-silly ways to survive the silly season

It’s tinsel-time, and however you choose to unwind before the new year kicks into gear, try these guaranteed tactics for playing the fool this Yule.

Picture the scene. It’s the summer holidays. You’ve finally left work and its worries behind, and two or three weeks of holiday bliss stretch in front of you. Time to relax and recharge and spend some time with your family and friends. But there’s the shopping to do. And the housework. And Aunty Mavis will be at all the family gatherings, and she has the knack of annoying every person in the room by pointing out that they’ve lost weight, or become pimply and grey. And Uncle Harry, well, let’s just say he loves to fill himself with as much festive spirit as possible and then becomes a complete pest. And as you ponder those occasions, your shoulders slump, and you sigh, and you obsessively read every magazine article you can find titled, “How to survive silly season”.

But what if you could approach the silly season differently – with a whole lot more silliness than most of us ever make time for? What if you could spend the holidays laughing with your family, and having some good, old-fashioned, inexpensive fun? Need some inspiration?

Here are seven activities for “kids from one to 92” that the whole family can do.

• Decide on a family ‘uniform’ for visits to the mall. Add a sense of fun to the dreaded shopping excursions. Insist that every time you go to the shops, members of the expedition must wear striped socks and slip slops, or a cap and false moustache – or a combination of any of those. As you move through the mall corridors, do so as a unit, singing a festive song or a family favourite, and as soon as you enter a shop, everyone must be quiet. When you exit, the singing resumes.
• Cultivate a sense of drama. If you have to meet relatives at the airport, station or bus depot, run towards them in exaggerated slow-mo, while Chariots of Fire plays from somebody’s cell phone.
• Play ‘Knock It Out’. All you need is six empty water bottles from one brand, and six from another (one brand per player). Dot them around the room randomly, and then get two players, each armed with a tennis ball or an orange and a pair of pantyhose. Put the ball or orange into the foot of the pantyhose and wear the panty part of the tights on your head. Players put their hands behind their backs and must try and knock over all of their own water bottles with their orange or tennis ball.
• Play ‘Poop the Potato’. You need some raw potatoes and a couple of buckets. Players grip the potato between their butt cheeks (everyone stays clothed, please) and race to drop as many of them into a bucket across the room. The player with the most potatoes in their bucket when the pile is finished, wins. If that’s too easy, replace the potato with a coin and the bucket with a beer mug.
• Recreate the baby pictures of all the adults in the family. Print them out and make an album with the old ones as comparison, or with the parties’ consent, post the pictures on Facebook so the broader family can have a giggle.
• Strike a pose. Challenge your family to pose with every statue in your town, or, if you’re travelling, pose with statues you come across. But don’t just stand there – interact with the statue in some way and see how creative you can be. (Just don’t do anything that’ll get you arrested.)
• Put your heads together. Divide the extended family into two teams, making sure the ages are more or less evenly distributed. Each team should be divided into pairs, and each pair must transport an orange from the starting point to a point across the garden by pressing an orange between their foreheads. No hands – and if the orange drops they start again. Once they get back with their orange, the next pair may go.

And if none of those appeal, either research your own, or just resolve to spend more time these holidays having fun. Take some pressure off yourself by not viewing the holidays as some sort of bizarre domestic performance art, and find ways to build laughter into every day – it is the best medicine, and after a long, busy year, it’s time to rest, recharge, and have a bit of a laugh.