The other day as we were waiting for another married couple to arrive for a picnic, Mick and I were reminiscing about Christmases past. This led back to childhood and childhood friends and games.
It seems reminiscing was the spark for a new book which arrived on my desk this week for review. Called Parlour Games for Modern Families, the inspiration behind the book was as the authors Myfanawy Jones and Spiri Tsintziras book talked about games from when they were younger. They realized even talking about the games made them feel good. Then why they didn’t play more games, they wondered. Why indeed. It’s a question we could all probably ask ourselves.
Mick and I have always been a fan of board games and often play with friends or family, but I’d forgotten about these other games that require minimal equipment except perhaps basic things found in any house, games like Wink Murder. I remember playing that at a friend’s house one night where we knew one married couple but were meeting about four other couples for the fist time. It certainly proved an icebreaker among the couples.
There are games played with pen and paper (yes that old fashioned stuff we used before computers) and games that require actions like Charades as well as card games, and dice games including a game called Yacht which was the precursor to the commercial game of Yahtzee which was invented by a couple in 1954 while on their yacht.
A recent blog was about playfulness in marriage and in a way this is a follow on from that. I love the quote from George Bernard Shaw, ‘we didn’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.’ So if you want to keep yourself and your marriage young, try some games.
What better time than at Christmas when families are together and you and your spouse have time off work, to introduce these games to a younger generation or re-introduce them to you and your spouse? So why not give it a go this holiday period? You might just discover some interesting things about your spouse.
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