If Life Is A Game, It's Candyland

I’ve loved board games ever since I was a very young kid, and I still do. Not only are they fun, but they have a lot to teach us about life and about ourselves. Great board games allow us to unconsciously learn how to approach a challenge creatively, sharpen our wits, win with grace, and recover from loss. . . all while having a hell of a lot of fun!

On that note, I thought I'd celebrate my recent victory in our annual family chess tournament with a list of my five favorite, and most most personally influential, board games. When making my selections, I tried to recall which games gave me the full-package experience; ones which allowed me to compete, strategtize, have fun, get excited, and be social all at once. I was also interested in their longevity (were they still as fun for me now as they were when I was a child) as well as in their replay value (was each round of gameplay significantly different from the previous one). Finally, I didn’t want my top five to be just a nostalgic shopping list of popular titles. Instead, I chose games which had each taught me something significant about life, whether they meant to or not.

That said, on we go!

5. MONOPOLY
I thought I'd begin my influential game countdown with the moat obvious game about life: Monopoly! Who would have thought that a game which roots its basic premise firmly in financial planning could be so enjoyable? Sure, it has its silly moments -- you can play as an old boot, for crying out loud -- but for the most part, the entire thing is about the rather serious business of saving money, making money, and outlining smart investment tactics. Even the most spontaneous people begin calculating the odds in their favor when sitting down to a session of Monopoly. It doesn't take much superior math skill to realize that although acquiring Boardwalk may be the ultimate bragging right, it's smarter to split your money and gobble up the green strip of properties immediately preceding it, as the other players tend to land on them more often. The game also taught me the value of frugality; coughing up the cash for Park Place might seem like a good idea with its potential for large immediate returns, but taking the time to invest in the dirt-cheap purple properties around the corner is smarter in the long run. With a couple of shiny red hotels, they become significantly more valuable -- and make back their investment cost more quickly than their expensive compatriots. Finally, Monopoly taught me that, as tempting and easy as it seems, never depend on Free Parking to get you out of a jam, as you are certainly more apt to end up inhabiting the Income Tax square. Suffice to say, I learned more about money management from this game than I did from having my first credit card.

The money might not be real, but the life lessons? Invaluable.



4. PARCHEESI
I loved Parcheesi as a kid, although most of my peers liked the colorful Sorry! better. I was also a big fan of "Popomatic" Trouble. They are all essentially the same game, except that Parcheesi, which originated in India, came first, and the pieces are made out of wood instead of plastic. In all three, the object is to move a certain number of colored pieces from your home base safely around the board and to the goal. Meanwhile, the other players' pieces attempt to beat you there, and occasionally step on your toes, sending your piece running home with its tail between its legs. Regardless as to what the gaming company called it, this ordeal taught us the same very important lesson: no matter how far you get, you may find yourself back where you started. However, even if it's the 8th time you've been forced to start over, you'll never make it to the finish line if you don't leave home -- so get back out there!

Another lesson more specific to Parcheesi is that it's always safer to travel in pairs, as doubling same-color pieces can better protect you from being "bumped" home by another player.

If only corporate politics were so simple.



3. ENCHANTED FOREST
I'm the only one I know of who remembers (and still owns) this game. The board was covered with about 20 little plastic trees, each of which had symbols drawn on the bottom representing classic fairy tales (Cinderella's slipper, Sleeping Beauty's spindle, Aladdin's lamp, etc). Your job was to travel around the board and earn the opportunity to catch a glimpse at the bottom of a tree. When a fairy tale card appeared in the castle on one side of the board, you could win it if you correctly identified which tree contained the matching symbol. At the end, the player with the most cards won. It was lots of fun, had beautiful illustrations, and since I have a good memory, I always won.

However, despite my 18-year winning streak on this game (I finally lost to a roommate in college), it taught me a lot about taking my time, keeping my emotions in check, and how to successfully utilize a healthy dose of deceit. Beneath the surface-level façade in which Enchanted Forest appears to be nothing more than a dressed-up version of Memory, lies a much more sophisticated game, where manipulative strategies more akin to those used in Poker come into play. Although I could always beat my mother on sheer memory power alone, more experienced opponents required dipping into the darker side of this game. With a little cunning, you could trick the other players into believing certain symbols were in places they were not by bluffing your reactions to specific trees, or picking up extra trees before heading to the castle. . . a sure sign you had found the picture on the current card. It also benefited you to take roundabout routes to the castle, not giving away that you knew the symbol's exact location until the last possible move. Finally, you had to be very in-tune to the reactions of the other players to their trees, trying to guess if they had found what you were looking for, and deciding whether to take a gamble and head for the castle, or decide they were bluffing and keep searching.

I became very adept at reading the emotions of others while keeping my own hidden with this game.



2. CHESS
Before you say this isn’t a game for someone of any age, realize that my Dad taught both my brother and I to play before we were 5 years old, and we loved it immediately. Once you learn how each piece is allowed to move, the rest of the game is wide open -- a theme park for a creative kid like me, where no two games are alike and strategy is the entire experience. I learned more from this game about trial and error than I ever gained from any science experiment. It also taught me to think very, very carefully before doing anything, and try to plot several possible outcomes to every choice. . . something I find myself doing a lot in life. I suppose chess really discouraged my spontaneous side, but at the same time it also taught me to wait for good opportunities. . . and grab them when they arrive.

However, the most important thing about this game, was that I learned how to lose. Because I lost CONSTANTLY.

My Dad, although a patient teacher who indulged in plenty of “trading Queens” plea bargains, never once LET us win. Ever.

He must have played easy because the games always lasted a long time, allowing us to try out our ideas for success, but we never were allowed to win. As a result, it took me 14 years to beat my Dad, and my brother about 9 years. And oh, how sweet that victory was, because we knew we had really, finally done it. It taught us the value of rising to a challenge, and sticking with it, and it also had the byproduct of making us damn good players. At this point, we’re all about even ability-wise, which is what makes our Christmas Eve family tournaments so much fun.



And the number one spot goes to. . .

1. CANDYLAND
The ultimate classic. No bells. No lights. No whistles. Just fun. You don't even need to know how to COUNT. I played this game for hours and hours as a kid, and never once got sick of it. The characters are fabulous in that wonderfully campy way, from the characters representing the players which we nicknamed The Children Of The Aryan Nation (a pack of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Candycane-dressed munchkins), to the game's inhabitants: King Candy, Queen Frostine, Princess Lolli, Grandma Nutt, Gloppy the Chocolate Swamp Monster, the evil licorice guy, the gumdrop alien-looking thing, the candy cane lumberjack, and cute little green Plumpy, the Sugarplum farmer who resembled Sulley from Monsters, Inc. The game is also awfully simple. Pull a color card, move to that color. Next. Pristine.

So what did I learn from such a simple concept other than I wasn't colorblind?

I learned the most basic thing any game can teach us: that competition, win or lose, is what makes playing games worthwhile. Candyland, in spite its simplicity, or maybe because of it, was a fast-paced, up and down game. It went by in 10 minutes flat, but it was completely unpredictable. There was no strategy; was all up to chance, and your luck could change on a dime.

Candyland was the ultimate metaphor for life: it's quick, it looks prettier than it is, sometimes you get to take the gumdrop shortcut and sometimes you get stuck in Gloppy's swamp, but no matter what happens, it's good just to be playing.



NOW, FOR A RANT:

If Candyland is the ultimate metaphor for life, than no wonder kids aren't learning to deal with it as well anymore -- the game is changing, and not for the better. Just as life is becoming more disconnected from education, Candyland, and games in general, are becoming more disconnected from the lessons they should be teaching those who play.

My case in point:

In college, we were feeling nostalgic and wanted to play some Candyland, but between us we couldn't pull together a complete set of the game we had owned as kids. I still had the cards and the player pieces, but no gameboard. To remedy this, I decided to buy a new one. We headed down to the local toy store and purchased a brand new box of Candyland for $8 (what a great deal!), brought it back to the dorm, and sat down to play. But when we opened the box, we found out the game manufacturers had really screwed it up. This was not the fun, spontaneous game we had remembered -- it had a new board, and new rules. . . all desgined to make the easiest game ever created EASIER. As a result, any knowledge kids could gain from the experience was destroyed.

Here's how:

1. THE VIRTUE OF PATIENCE
In the old game, when you got stuck on a spotted square (gumdrops, the chocolate swamp, etc.), you had to remain there until you drew a card of the same color. So if you were stuck on a spotted square that was yellow, you couldn't move until you drew a yellow card. When you finally drew that yellow card, you didn't even get to go anywhere - you just regained permission to move. This allowed other players to pass you or gain more of a lead depending on how long you were stuck there, making the game more exciting/stressful.

Under the new rules, when landing on a spotted square you "just lose one turn."

Oh, please. The whole fun was frantically missing turn after turn as your opponent's gingerbread men advanced. More importantly, this taught the value of patience. Yes, waiting can be frustrating, but it is often necessary. Learning not to panic just because you've hit a setback and your peers have not is a fundemental skill.

2. LUCK WORKS BOTH WAYS
When you drew a character card, you advanced directly to that character's square. In some cases this was a good thing -- Queen Frostine was near the end, so if you drew her early you jumped way ahead -- while in other cases it was a bad thing -- Plumpy the sugarplum picker was near the beginning, and drawing him at the end of the game sent you backwards and made for some frazzled nerves. Like life, sometimes a you were dealt good luck, and other times bad: deal with it.

But the new rules state that character cards only count if they propel you FORWARD. Meaning, they don't make you go back to Plumpy if you are just about to WIN.

WTF?

That's hardly fair. In life, you don't get to choose only to pick out the good things and disregard the bad. Why should you in the game? If drawing Queen Frostine means you get to jump ahead, than it's only fair that drawing Plumpy means you go back. . . and the same for all the characters in between.

3. OUR TOUGHEST CHALLENGES OCCUR WHEN THE GOAL IS IN SIGHT
Finally, in the old game, the last square was purple, so you would always be stuck near the end, often competing with other players to draw that damn purple card to achieve final victory. Like so often in life, we would approach the finish line only to hit another wall, our goals seem to be in our hands only to be snatched away. Learning to recover from loss (or what seems to be unavoidable loss) and pushing ahead is critical to our ability to function as human beings.

But on the new board, the last square is MULTICOLORED, so no matter what card you draw, you win.

ARGHH!

Set up that way, what's the bloody point? Why not just jump from the first square to the last, and not play at all?

The whole fun used to be the up and down of the game - somebody might draw Queen Frostine right away but get stuck in the swamp, or you might get sent back to Plumpy but manage to make it all the way back while the winning player kept trying to get that last purple card. Now whoever starts first pretty much wins. Talk about the ultimate "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

Maybe I'm being ridiculous, but to me, this is about more than just Candyland -- we, as a society, have given up on trying to teach kids how to compete, how to keep trying, how to lose gracefully, and ultimately how to deal with real life. Board games are, for many kids, their first real brush with competition, and by taking that competitive aspect away, we're squandering all these opportunities to learn and develop. I'm against this "everybody wins" philosophy which seemed to start just after I left elementary school, when I heard the teachers changed the school Field Day so that no team won or lost. Well, then why bother?

Winning isn't everything, but you don't learn that if you never lose, either.

In closing, what I loved most about games, just like what I like about life, is the challenge to succeed. I discovered through games that sometimes, that struggle is an accomplishment within itself.

But Christmas IS A Religious Holiday

A couple of weeks before Christmas, my mother informed me that a few of my close family members -- namely my cousin’s husband and their two sons, both my brother’s age -- had decided that they wouldn’t be accompanying us to Church on Christmas Eve this year. Basically, they thought the whole thing was pretty stupid, and after years of hating it, had finally chosen to opt out. We’d still be going to their house for our annual Christmas Eve party after the service, but my cousin, her daughter, and our aunt would be going with us alone. Having been aware of their dislike of the tradition, I was, suffice to say, not surprised. However I was inexplicably still shocked by their decision to split their family down the middle on Christmas Eve, and more than a little annoyed.

Now, as someone who is a Confirmation Class dropout and is pretty much against the concept of organized religious establishments in general, I feel slightly hypocritical here. Who am I to look down my nose at those who choose not to participate when I myself could easily be criticized for allowing my church attendance to decline to "Christmas and sometimes Easter?" And aren't I the person who created my own religion (Jessism) in order to allow it to be something of my own definition, turing my back on the label of “Protestant” and even “Christian?”

Although it's true that I'm not exactly traditional in my religious affiliations, many may be surprised to discover that I do pray nightly and consider myself a very spiritual person. I just think spirituality is a personal search which involves constant questioning -- a process which would be stifled by joining a fixed authority who claims to have all the answers. The idea that ANY human, whether he’s a homeless schizophrenic with an End is Near sign or the Pope, can have any concrete answers is what initially turned me against organized religion in the first place. That said, I still felt that it was wildly inappropriate and egotistical for my cousins to skip out on Christmas Eve service.

In fact, I was surprised at how strongly I felt this -- it really didn't directly effect me, so why was I so upset by it?

Well, my first problem with it was that it went in the face of tradition -- a big thing in our family, given our deep historical ties to the area and our relatives. In this case, the Holmes/Anderson/Weeks clan has belonged to the Second Church almost since it was founded in 1738. The church building we worship in now was built in 1828 - almost exactly the same time as my house, the Holmestead. The drawing on the church bulletin covers was done by my grandmother, Muriel Weeks. Her sister, Emmy Holmes, still holds the record for having the been a member the longest -- over 80 years. After she died, they named the rose garden and one of the Bibles after her. Everyone on my mother's side of the family either got married there, or had the church's minister marry them at home. And every Christmas Eve, our DNA has rested in one of Second Church's old wooden pews.

But more than all that, I just honestly can’t imagine NOT going.

Religious aspects aside, I enjoy being there as a family. I love walking down the aisle and sitting in the velvet seats which are just narrow enough to be uncomfortable. I love thumbing through the Bibles to see who has the one dedicated to Aunt Emmy, then arguing over who got stuck with the most abused candle. I love flipping through the aging songbook to find the my favorite hymn (and arguably the most inane one ever written) so I can whisper it aloud during the sermon and make everybody crack up:

“One was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one gotten eaten by a big wild beast. .”

Even after having done it twenty-four times, I still feel like a child when the gold chandeliers dim, and the deacons begin passing around the candlelight. I love watching it flicker off the wood and the wreaths and the eyes of my family members -- even as my cousins try to set each other’s hair on fire -- as the flames dance together, creating a warm, communal glow. And I love belting out carols and hearing my voice mix with my mother’s tone-deaf soprano, my father’s deep, echoing alto, my brother’s I-come-in-at-the-chorus-when-I-know-the-words tenor.

If it wasn’t for this night, I don’t think the four of us would ever sing together. I cherish that.

It’s an important constant -- no matter what else happens, on the 24th of December, we’re standing there, getting burned by running wax and singing Joy to the World. It’s familiar and comforting, like hot chocolate after sledding. I know they feel the same way, which is why my mother, atheist that she is, still goes, and I’m certain why my brother never questioned going as well despite his cousins’ decision. However, just doing something for tradition’s sake alone really isn’t a great reason to do it, not if you’re miserable every waking moment. Because of this, I can't completely condemn my cousins’ choice to hock tradition, although I am saddened by it.

So why the anger?

Well, that’s because going to church on Christmas is not just about tradition -- its about religious observance. It’s about humility. Despite my personal objections to the religious organization as an establishment, it seems wrong to me to say, “I don’t believe that Jesus was anybody special, but please give me a $500 iPod anyway.” Christmas in the United States is such an overblown, often selfish, commercial venture that I think its important to take at least a little time to think about what, exactly, it is we’re celebrating. As Charlie Brown famously asked, “Can somebody please tell me what Christmas is all about?” Well Blockhead, it’s about the Son of God being born. . . and if you don’t take some time to acknowledge that somewhere and give it it’s proper respect, then why the hell are you celebrating Christmas in the first place?

I mean, would you just one day decide, not being Jewish and never having attended Temple, to go out and buy a Menorah and some plastic dreidels and expect to receive Hanukkah gifts?

Of course not.

So why is it okay to put up a tree and a Santa lawn ornament, ignore the birth of Christ, and get presents?

Unfortunately, unlike other holidays, our country has secularized many aspects of Christmas to the extent that it now inhabits an ambiguous category in many people’s minds. We argue about what to call the giant decorated pine tree in Rockefeller Center, we say “Happy Holidays” in stores, we get work off, regardless of our religious affiliations, and many children from Jewish or other religious faiths believe in Santa or decorate trees. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but it has led to the creation of a bipolar idea of Christmas - a personality split between the religious observance and something else. For a country which has always walked a thin line between a Christian nation and a secular one (We’re the country which separates church and state and where Christmas is still technically illegal in Massachusetts, but has “In God We Trust” on our money and has a “Christian Right” political force), Christmas is a very confused holiday.

But as Ma Ingalls said on Little House on the Prairie, “It’s Christ’s birthday, not ours.” So what the hell are we doing?

Despite these problems, one thing is certain: Christmas, whether being celebrated religiously or secularly, is universally about several things: tradition, family, thanksgiving, humility, and generosity. It is taking time to spend with family, it is a time to give thanks, it is a time to think of others when we are so often focused on ourselves, and it is a time to give for the sake of giving, without expecting reward.

Therefore, why WOULDN'T you go to church, especially if the rest of your family prefers you be there? Going to church for an hour or two once a year never killed anybody, and it allows you to accomplish all those things which often get lost in the commercialization of Christmas -- spend time with family, have a moment of quiet to reflect and give thanks, be reminded of what this holiday is all about, and to be the bigger person and embrace generosity (whether that generosity means donating money to the collection plate, or deferring to the wishes of your wife and mother-in-law and accompany them to the service). I know I find it a nice time to reflect on how this holiday started, and the positive values it promotes. I like to think about how I’ve conducted myself for the past year, and how I can make myself better, and value some of those positives more closely. How I can be more selfless, more caring? What am I thankful for, and have I expressed that - emotionally - enough to those who matter, instead of allowing gifts or other relatively hollow gestures to speak for me?

Most importantly, do I recognize how great it is that we’re all here together, when we easily might not be?