Dysfunctional Family Bingo: A humorous perspective for the Christmas break…

It’s that time of year again. Everyone is in a mad rush to buy last-minute presents, finalise projects and work out how to cope with the more challenging family members during the gatherings. If you’d like a more light-hearted perspective, please read on…

If you already feel the dread, here’s a humorous way to get through. Check out Dysfunctional Family Bingo.

Here’s how it works

Team up with some friends and create a bingo card to fill out, a simple grid with five rows and five columns of boxes will do, or use the one on the link here.

In each empty square on your bingo card, write down an incident you will dread during a family celebration. For example, in one square, you might write, “Josh refuses to use his inside voice and makes Dad’s hearing aid short out”. Or “Sam rolls her eyes when Grandma asks her how her school grades are going” or “the free-range parents and the helicopter parents have a glare-off.” “Great Aunt Mildred dozes off at the dining table”, “the primary school youngsters imitate the less than delightful behaviours of the teenagers” feel free to get more specific on that one! You get this gist.

Each person fills out their card with likely scenarios from their particular family. Put one behaviour from your list into each of the empty bingo squares and take it with you to the family gathering. Ideally the game is kept to yourself - well, at least not until the holiday is over, the bingo game has been played, and your solicitor has finalised your will.

At the family gathering, when the dysfunctional behaviour occurs, mark off the bingo square for that behaviour listed. If you get bingo - a solid horizontal, vertical or diagonal row across the whole card, you secretly text your friends “BINGO”. Whoever gets Bingo first gets lunch shouted from the other players. If no one gets bingo, then the person with the most squares filled out wins! 

A sample bingo card is shown here:

Give yourself a break

So apart from using humour to glide unscathed throughout the Christmas period, allowing ourselves to accept what’s happening around us and permitting ourselves to exhale over the break all go a long way to creating more enjoyment during the times we previously dreaded. When we look from the perspective of our inner observer, we can distance ourselves, gifting us the space to not take things personally and allow others just to be themselves.

You can download a blank bingo card here. Enjoy!

I wish you and your loved ones a safe and happy holiday season!