Time: 10-30 minutes.
Mail your True Love one Christmas card each day—and be sure to boast to everyone else about it. In order to keep up with all the other suitors, you might have to lie about what you’ve sent. But lying is half the fun! Will you win by being the sneakiest liar, or by catching others in THEIR lies?
Bah! Humbug! is a bluffing and deduction card game that uses a special card deck based on the traditional “Twelve Days of Christmas” carol (12 x Drummers Drumming, 11 x Pipers Piping, etc.) plus a deck of 12 cards that form a circular wreath or calendar in the center of the table.
Each round, players are dealt a hand of Christmas cards. They then take turns secretly mailing 1 Christmas card to their True Love (playing a card face-down on the calendar). These cards are played in descending order, from 12 to 1. As each player boasts about what card they’ve sent, other players may shout, “Bah! Humbug!” to catch them in a lie. Lies that go unchallenged are awarded “coal” at the end of the round, while lies that are successfully caught earn the accuser 1 “holly berry” (or take away holly berries, if the accuser is wrong.)
A player can win Bah! Humbug! in either of two ways: by being the most successful liar (collecting the most coal tokens), or by being the best at catching other liars (collecting the most holly berries).
