GGB Leeds: The Geek Girl Grotto, Christmas 2016
Welcome to the Geek Girl Grotto, Leeds’ Christmas Brunch!
We Leeds Brunchettes aren’t afraid to add a touch of novelty to our events: trying new venues, wordplay in the names, and things like that. So, following the opening of a new shopping centre in the city, we took the opportunity to have our Christmas party in the middle of a department store – and used the quirky location as inspiration for our event subtitle.
The store in question, John Lewis, has a small room on the fourth floor called The Community Hub, and they kindly allowed us to use this space for our gathering. Rather than going for a designated theme or having a served meal, we opted for a more casual fuddle/pot luck arrangement. We popped on a playlist of Christmas music, and set up a little buffet of snacks and treats – with a gingerbread house as our centrepiece. Brunchettes were also invited to wear a Christmas jumper in exchange for a 50p donation to a local charity, Cash for Kids Mission Christmas.
Swag on offer included Santa hats, flashing snowman and reindeer badges and novelty pencils. For an icebreaker, everyone was given a candy cane with a gift tag attached containing a conversation prompt: things such as “What is your favourite Christmas memory?” and “What TV specials can’t you wait for this year?” We also pulled Christmas crackers, and took part in the classic tradition of donning the paper crowns (in this case, on top of the Santa hats!) and reading the awfully corny jokes.
For activities, Brunchettes had been invited to bring a board or card game with them. After having a few nibbles, our attendees were introduced to the card game “Coup”. It’s similar in style to the classic game “Cheat”, in that you have to mislead your fellow players and lie about the cards in your hand in order to succeed. Some of our Brunchettes struggled with this initially (they’re an honest bunch, bless ‘em!) – but they soon got into the spirit of things!
Another tradition followed: swapping Secret Santa presents. Attendees brought a gift of £5 value, were given a raffle ticket, and were then called up at random to take a gift given by someone else. Everyone was very happy with their gifts – with one Brunchette being brought to tears by the sheer cuteness of her new stuffed animal.
We rounded off the gathering with a Christmas carol quiz – the final challenge being to list all of the gifts from the Twelve Days of Christmas! – then headed out, as always, for our geeky shopping spree.
So, that’s it from the Leeds Chapter for 2016: we’ll see you in the New Year!
