Traditionally celebrated on the 5th December (although we did it a little earlier this year), Pakjes Avond is the dutch fete of St. Nicolas that tends to replace Christmas as the main gift-giving day of December. I don't know how traditional our anglo-dutch version is, but I love it and I think it's a lovely idea that I would like to keep up.
Here's the premise : everyone is assigned in secret one person to buy a gift for. You have a budget and generally people get one 'real' gift and one funny gift, but I combined mine this year in one bumper gift, sometimes you write a little poem to go with it, which I did, but unfortunately I lost my copy so I can't share it with you. Then in the evening of the 5th, all the gifts get hidden under a blanket and handed out by the younger members. At the end of the evening when all the gifts have been given everyone has to guess who their secret gift-giver was.
I had to buy a gift for my uncle Steve, and after much deliberation I decided to create a Christmas survival kit for men. The main gift was homemade chilli-infused vodka, which turned out very spicy and would be amazing mixed into a bloody mary or a spicy martini. The other gifts were fun survival bits and bobs, like mints and ear plugs, that I repackaged and wrapped up in one big box. Take a look at the photos below to see what the final product looked like. I hope you like it :-)
0 comments:
Post a Comment