The 24 Festive Tasks is another game that a group of friends started to play a few years ago on a bookish platform that has since gone to seed (or as good as). The game starts on 1st November, hot on the heels of Halloween Bingo, and runs until the end of the year.
Unlike Halloween Bingo, The 24 Festive Tasks are a laid-back compilation of tasks set in the format of an advent calendar and feature reading and books as much as non-bookish activities.
During the game, each player checks off as many or as few tasks as they want and enjoys everyone elses posts on the same subjects.
I’ll use this post as the master post and add links to updates as I go along and as further Tasks are revealed.
Door 1: Southern Hemisphere
Book: Read a book set in the Southern Hemisphere, or that has a beachy scene on the cover.
Task 1: In Australia, it’s common to brag about having the “biggest ‘X’ in the Southern Hemisphere!” Biggest mall, biggest prawn (don’t ask), biggest pineapple, biggest earthworm. What does your country / city / region brag about having the best or the biggest of…?
Task 2: It’s Melbourne Cup Day! Time to pick the ponies!
Task 3: In honor of the depiction of Santa in Australian-style clothing, dress up your dog (or cat), or just use photoshop or another photo editing program, to dress up one of your pets as the Australian version of Santa Paws. Post the picture here – the zanier, the better!
Task 4: Australia has the world’s longest fence, the dingo fence, which at 3,436 miles (5529.7 kilometres) beats the Great Wall of China.
Using an average of 12 books / meter, or 4 books / foot as a guide, if you had to build a fence of your own to keep the dingos out, how long a fence could you build with the books in your library (real or virtual)?
Points: 0
Door 2: Holiday Books
Book: Read a holiday themed book.
Task 1: Holiday books often have covers that try to evoke a certain emotion in the reader. Post a picture, or a gallery of pictures, of holiday themed book covers that really appeal to you, and, if you want to, tell us why.
Task 2: If you could invent the perfect bookish holiday, what time of year would it occur, and what would it involve?
Task 3: Jólabókaflóðið, or Jolabokaflod: Are you familiar with this Icelandic holiday, where everybody exchanges books on Christmas eve, then spend the evening reading and eating chocolate. Do you celebrate this holiday? Tell us about it.
Task 4: Let’s play Six Degrees of Literation! Start with the book that you are reading right now and make a chain of six books, linked in however you want to link them, to one of the classic holiday reads mentioned in this Guardian article.
Points: 0
Door 3: Light(s)
Book: Read a book with the sun, or festive lights on the cover, or a book that’s set somewhere sunny.
Task 1: How long is the longest day of the year where you live? How long is the shortest? Does your home town/country celebrate the solstice?
Task 2: Share some photos of your favorite light display, if you have them, or if you have a neighbor who goes ‘all out’, snap a photo to share.
Task 3: Is your community known for any light displays in particular? Are there any displays (anywhere in the world) that you would really like to see in person? Tell us about them.
Task 4: (Cheeky): Badly behaving authors: name some authors who think the sun shines out of their … ya’ know.
Points: 0
Door 4: Decorating
Book: Read a book that has an object that can be used as a Christmas decoration on the cover.
Task 1: Do you have any decorations that you anticipate putting out each year because they are particularly meaningful to you or your family? Please take a picture and tell us why!
Task 2: Snap a picture of your favorite church or other interior in all its seasonal glory. Or, give us the opposite – post a picture of the worst, gaudiest or lamest holiday interior that you see – either on the internet or IRL.
Task 3: The Christmas Tree is the ultimate holiday decorating element. Are you fake or real? Green or some other color? Picky about ornament placement or fly by the seat of your pants? Themed or willy-nilly? Handmade or purchased? Tell us your aspiration, and then show us reality.
Task 4: (Cheeky): What is the ugliest ornament that you have, that you just can’t get rid of because someone in your family either made it or gave it to you as a gift? You know that there’s one of those – this is the place to admit your shame!
Points: 0
Door 5: Animals
Book: Read a book that has an animal on the cover, or involves someone who works in conservation.
Task 1: What’s the weirdest animal you’ve ever ridden or what’s the most exotic, or unusual, animal you’ve ever seen in the wild? Share your funniest animal story – what hilarious thing did your pet do, or what hilarious, comic moment have you seen / experienced with any animal?
Task 2: Show us your feline and non-feline pets. Try to get as many of them into a picture as you can without causing mayhem or the fur to fly and share it with us. If the animals just don’t feel the love, multiple photos are ok too, but make them the zany shots that would cause embarrassment to said pet if they could feel such emotion. Alternatively, show us a picture of an animal you wish were domesticated so you could have it as a pet, without the risk of being eaten or having your house destroyed!
Task 3: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is probably the best known animal associated with Christmas, and was created as part of an ad campaign. He began life in a poem written in the same meter as the other iconic poem, The Night Before Christmas. If you are feeling poetic, write a (short) poem (any meter is fine) about one of the animals profiled here as associated with Christmas.
Task 4: (Cheeky) If you have a cat (or can borrow one from a friend), take a picture of him / her looking particularly fierce and ready to eat a naughty child. If you really want to go all out, photoshop a giant version of your cat onto a picture, prowling the countryside looking for lazy children to eat.
Points: 0
Door 6: Color(s)
Book: Read a book with a cover that is more than 50% red or green.
Task 1: Post a photograph of a stack of books with covers in your favorite color or color palette, or, show us a stack of books in all of the colors of the rainbow.
Task 2: Did you get into the colouring book craze? If you did, what was your favorite colouring book?
Task 3: How do you use color in your personal living space or for your holiday decorating? Do you paint your walls in all the wild colors, or do you rely on accents? Do you have a color palette that you have selected for your decorating schemes? Show us a pic of a particularly colourful spot in your home (either decorated for the season, or not – whichever you prefer!).
Task 4: (Cheeky) Describe your most spectacular bruise – how did you get it?
Points:
Door 7: Gift Giving & Wrapping
Book: Book task: Read a book with a cover that would make beautiful wrapping paper; or read a book that you would have enjoyed giving or receiving as a gift..
Task 1: Are you a fan of gift giving, or is it a burden? Have you figured out a way to balance the commercialization of the season with the desire for a sense of meaning (whether religious or not)? Tell us about it and, if you want, post a picture of your wrapped gifts under the tree, or wherever you display them before the unwrapping celebration.
Task 2: Gift wrapping: Friend or Foe? Fancy or utilitarian? To bow or not to bow? Do you make your own wrapping or do you purchase? Are you a toss it all out at the end kind of person, or do you quietly grab the reusable ribbons, etc. to tuck away for another year? No judgements, we promise.
Task 3: Judge a book by its cover! Choose a book you’ve never read and speculate on the quality of the story based on its cover, OR, Post a cover of a book you’ve read that you think is beautiful and tell us if the book lived up to its ‘wrapping’.
Task 4: (Cheeky): Tell us about the worst, or cheesiest gift you ever received, or, tell us about the BEST present you ever received, whether it was something you really wished for, or something you never knew you needed or wanted but treasure now.
Points: 0
Door 8: Music
Book: Read a book where the plot involves music or the people who perform or write it; or read a non-fiction memoir by a musician.
Task 1: What’s your favorite type of music to listen to during the festive season? Rock? Classical? Opera? Country?
Task 2: Do your have any traditions in your family / amongst your friends centered around music this time of year? Carol singing? Concerts? Performances?
Task 3: List your 3 favorite holiday songs – if you have a favorite playlist on Spotify or a similar place, share that with us.
Task 4: (Cheeky): Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer was originally performed in 1979, and remains a high (or low) water mark for holiday songs.. Do you love irreverent holiday songs or hate them? What about holiday parodies? Link us to your favorite YouTube music video of either a parody or a holiday song that is not to be taken seriously and, if you’re up to it, give us a title or few verses of your own parody. To get you started, here is a holiday parody of Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball called Deck the Halls by Dave & Brian.
Points:
Door 9: Cycles
Book: Read a book that has something lucky on the cover or in the title; or that has a cover that is more than 50% red, yellow and green, which are considered lucky colors in China.
Task 1: Come up with your own New Year luck ritual, designed to ensure a year of great bookish experiences, the weirder the better. Describe it to us in detail, or provide a tutorial for everyone to follow.
Task 2: Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? Why or why not? What is the worst/best resolution you’ve ever made?
Task 3: The Chinese Lunar Calendar is based on cycles of the moon and the sun. Next year’s animal sign is the Sign of the Tiger, which means that babies born in 2022 are predicted to be “brave, competitive, unpredictable and confident.” What was the animal sign of your birth year? Let us know how it does, or does not, fit you.
Task 4: (Cheeky) Jump on your bicycle & go for a ride! If the weather is kind, take a bike ride and snap some pics so we can enjoy the ride with you.
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