The best Christmas tradition ever.

My favorite Christmas tradition is called the Christmas ball. This tradition comes from Marian D Hanks. My great grandfather served a mission with President Hanks and incorporated this Hanks tradition into our own Christmas celebrations.

We do the Christmas ball on Christmas eve. Everyone sits in a big circle on the floor and we start to roll the ball.

The ball used to be rolls of paper towels with a prize taped to each square but now we use beautiful material balls my Aunt made. Each pocket has a prize something like; gum, pencils, whistles, dish clothes, (I hated getting dish clothes as a kid) gift cards, and the occasional number.

The numbers are the best prizes, they mean you'll get a BIG prize after the ball is over. There are also papers in some of the pockets and they usually tell you to do something like sing "Jingle Bells," or hand your prize to the person next to you. These papers usually crack me up so long as I'm not the one who finds them in my pocket.

The big prizes that come with the numbers are usually the most exciting part. Your number might get you something fantastic like a bottle of sparkling cider, makeup, a candle, and once I even got an Mp3 player. There are also prizes that kind of stink like; a Chicago Bears wall clock, a solar powered pocket calculator, or jumper cables (which I later found out didn't work very well at all), etc.

The Christmas ball is the best! Even if you're the one to end up writing your name with your hips in front of everybody and win a glasses case as your prize. It's odds on, that you'll have fun being with your family, laugh lots and at least get a dish clothe or two out of it, which I no longer dread and totally hope I get.