The Pickle

The Christmas Pickle idea came to us via an ad in a glossy catalog but was only implemented after pickle shaped ornaments made their way into our local dollar store. Sort of a weird tradition, family rules developed immediately and we're now in our third year of Christmas Pickle competition.

This was the only time I found the pickle in 2016. I was given 37 hints because I've quite
possibly lost the ability to find said pickle. I've never won the contest.

Our pickle ornament is a smallish dill made from styrofoam. The hanger cracked off once in the heat of competition. No longer can the victor swirl the pickle like a helicopter. As you can see above, the pickle is the roughly the same color as the tree. In our house, we have an ongoing pickular hide and seek from the time the tree goes up until bedtime on Christmas Eve. The winner is the person that knows where the pickle is hiding at that time. The prize is a day trip of the winner's choice.

Julia wins every time.

We had to retire our living room tree last year due to the death of over half of the lights. Pre-lit trees are fun like that. I spent an afternoon trying to unstring and re-string before we decided we'd just go to Target after the holiday and find a new one on clearance. The new tree is skinnier and has more realistic faux pine boughs that add a new level of difficulty to the attachment of ornaments. Some in our house (that'd be me) were afraid that the vigorous finding and re-hiding of the pickle might knock every glass ball off of the new tree.

So this year, the pickle has to be hung like any other ornament. It can't disguise itself horizontally along a limb or sneak into a mini stocking ornament. It has to hang.

I'm happy to report that I've found it once already this year. It might just be my time. I'm going to start thinking about where I want to go. Just in case.