Week Two: The Calendar Party

So, Who Wants to Shake Hands
with the Queen of Halloween?

Endeavorers, Endeavorers, listen here,
There are just twelve months in a year,
And on this coming Friday night
We'll find the best in each all right.
At our Calendar Party be sure to appear,
It'll be an evening remembered all the year.

Dress to represent the month in which you were born.

You heard right. This is a costume party. But because it's a calendar costume party, Your Host suggests the following costumes. (Hint: pray you were not born in March, April, or August.)

January: Men, Father Time; ladies, Snow Girl
February: Men, Abraham Lincoln; ladies, Martha Washington
March: Men, Irish boys with clay pipe and shamrock; ladies, Irish ladies
April: Men, fools with caps and bells; ladies, Easter angels
May: Men, baseball suits; ladies, May queen
June: Men, cap and gown (graduation); ladies, brides
July: Men, Uncle Sam; ladies, Liberty
August: Men, summer clothes (white) and tennis racquets; ladies, summer clothes with tennis racquets
September: Men, overalls; ladies, schoolgirls with books
October: Men, dressed as ghosts; ladies, dressed as witches
November: Men, football players; ladies, Puritan girls
December: Kings of the Orient; ladies, Mary

Showing up dressed as a Gregorian calendar, of course, would be completely gauche.

February's suggestions are especially intriguing; they imply either that Abraham Lincoln and Martha Washington had an interdimensional thing or that the notion that Mary Todd Lincoln was the world's only married spinster was alive and well in 1932.

Now that your guests are all dressed and those born in March are trying on their most wearying Irish accents, it's on to the games. You don't have to decorate, as the colors and decorations for the Calendar Party are the same as for the Watch Party you had last time; hopefully you didn't take them down.

Now, the games:

January. The leader will have cotton snowballs, which will be given to each group. A barrel hoop has been arranged to represent a holly wreath and a bell has been suspended in it. Every time a player throws the cotton snowball through the holly wreath without ringing the bell, it will count five points for his group.

Sound familiar? Yup, you played that game at your last party. Most of the fun from this one, of course, comes from explaining how you came across something as anachronistic as a barrel hoop.

There's more:

April. The leader will announce that somewhere hidden in the room is a five-pound bag of peanuts, and that a handsome prize will be given to the one who finds it. After they have searched for a few moments, the leader then blows the whistle and says, "April Fool."

This game begs several questions. Firstly, where in the name of heaven is anyone going to find a five-pound bag of peanuts these days? And secondly, couldn't you dovetail this game with a search for random Legos, lost keys, dust bunnies and other such items that get lost in places dimmer guests might search in looking for a five-pound bag of peanuts? And you also thought you'd only use your whistle at one party. Shame on you.

July. Have a blindfold test. Select one person from each group. Blindfold these who have been selected, and have them identify different articles by the sense of smell. Use cloves, potato, ammonia, Vick's salve, limberger cheese, castor oil, et cetera.

Anachronism upon anachronism. Cloves, check. Potato. Maybe. Ammonia? Vick's? Limberger and castor oil? Maybe we'd better have this party at grandma's house.

August. Apple relay. Slect four from each group, either men or women. Give the first one in each group a paring knife and an apple. The first one to peel theapple, the second must quarter it, the third cut out the core and the fourt eat the apple. Make a rule that number 4 cannot start eating until number three has finished cutting the core from all four quarters.

Modify this game just a bit by eliminating the eater at the end and you can easily trick your friends into getting your apples ready for bottling. Bottling? Sure, this party is outta the dawn of time anyway. . .

October. Meeting the Queen of Halloween. Have the Queen of Halloween dressed up as a ghost and steated on a chair under which has been placed an electric battery. On her right hand the Queen has a glove that has been wired in such a way that those shaking hands will get an electroc shock.

Juice it up, of course, for those party guests whom the rest have tired of. Or watch Abe and Martha dance to the tune of 220.

December. Decorate Christmas Tree. Have three small Christmas trees to be decorated. These might be stuck into pots of dirt. Provide each group with materials to decorate them with. Select one person or a couple from each group. They are allowed five minutes to decorate the tree. The person or couple doing the best job in the estimation of the judges wins.

For those thinking ahead, find a place to store the decorated trees for re-use at Christmastime.

Now comes the best part. This party is going to make you money. Evidently, the idea is to convince people to "buy" a day, a week, a month, on a calendar, so that the purchased portions of time are theirs in perpituity. Or at least the warm feeling they get when you write their name on their purchased day, week, month or year.

And that's it, aside from refreshments. Have any hot chocolate and sandwiches left over from last time? Dump them on your guests now, or substitute hot coffee or tea for the chocolate. That's your wild hair making your Calendar Party a smashing success.

That's it until next week and the Automobile Party. Toot toot!