Christmas Magic
/I received an email asking if I had any recommendations for Christmas tricks. Now, Christmas does offer a lot of opportunities to perform, and I do take advantage of those although I try not to push it too much. It really depends on if the situation calls for it. If a party is really cooking and you stop it to get everyone to pay attention to you, that’s pretty corny. But at a low-key get-together, or if I’m spending time with one or two other people, I’ll definitely take the opportunity show a trick if it will energize the interaction. That’s probably good performance advice generally. Is what you’re about to do going to liven things up or slow things down? If it’s the latter, maybe now’s not the time to break out your little miracle.
Even in the holiday season, I don’t necessarily do a ton of stuff that is specifically holiday themed, but here are some of my favorites that fall into that category..
Probably my favorite Christmas-y trick—and a reader favorite as well—is the Red Pinetree Gift Lottery from the JAMM #11. It’s a trick you do with a larger group of people where one person randomly wins a present in a “gift lottery” and that present is a gift that only they would want. Or, as I like to do it, it’s an artistic representation of themselves winning the gift lottery. So it’s a self referential gift. For instance, the first year I created this trick I performed a version where the “random winner” won a snow globe. And in that snow globe was a little scene… of them winning a snow globe. It was clearly them, down to the outfit they were wearing at that time. (You can get kits to make your own snow globe. I knew the person I was going to perform it on so I had it all ready to go besides the outfit. And I painted the clothes on her little figurine after she arrived at the house, but still hours before the performance. Later I assembled the snow globe and all was good to go.)
Another Christmas trick I like is my presentation for Hanson Chien’s Omamori, which takes the gimmick and turns it into Christmas ornament that can hang on your tree all season.
For those of you who were supporters a couple years ago, the full write-up of that trick is in The Wanderer newsletter. Volume 1, Issue 9. from December 2020.
I like Michel Huot’s Socks trick, but the Christmas version.
I cannot emphasize enough that the trick is vastly stronger when you perform it in the opposite way that Michel does. In other words, you perform the card matching part first, and then you perform the part where the socks they choose match the ones on your feet.
I go into greater detail about that in this post.
For the first half of the trick, I use a handling by John Bannon from his trick Poker Paradox which can be found on his Bullet Party DVD or in his book High Caliber. 16 sock cards are shuffled. You show they’re unpaired. Then they magically become paired up. For the second phase I add the rest of the cards into the mix, allow the spectator to shuffle, and the use the Liam Montier variation that’s included in the instructions.
So the first part is me doing the magic, and it has the feel of a card trick. The second part is all in the spectator’s hands and becomes something much cooler than “just a card trick.”
Michel Huot has another Christmas trick called D’Christmas Tree where you pluck the illumination from an individual bulb on a strand of Christmas lights. You can find it in the December 2007 of Genii magazine. You need the right kind of Christmas lights, but it’s a cool spontaneous seeming moment if you get the right situation. It
Finally, one I enjoy is Angelo Carbone’s The Gift, but wrap the box and put it under the tree. The fact that your accurate prediction is sealed in a wrapped gift makes it even stronger. It doesn’t have to be a card trick. (And for Christmas, it probably shouldn’t be.)
One thing I’ve done in the past is write a bunch of potential gifts on blank cards. One gift per card. Use a “cutting the aces” type sequence to force four of the cards. (Or any other forcing or equivoque handling to narrow it down to four cards.) Now they have a free choice of which of the remaining four gifts they would like the most. Let’s say the final present options are: a new laptop, a trip to Disneyland, a diamond bracelet, or an indoor sauna. The gifts don’t really need to be this expensive, I’m just using them as an example. For the trick to make sense, the final gifts all have to be of a similar value, and each has to be something the participant might want, and you should be prepared to get the person one of these gifts.
So let’s imagine I perform this for someone and narrow down dozens of different presents to four, and from those four they pick the laptop.
They open the box and inside is a slip that says:
Coupon for ONE FREE HUG!
I look through the other cards and pull one out and say, “I really thought you were going to end up with this one. The one for a free hug. Damn.”
Then the person notices, or I point out, the fine print on the coupon.
Terms and conditions apply. Good for one free hug during the calendar year 1/1/2023 to 12/31/2023. Hug must be platonic and no squeezing of my firm yet supple buttocks allowed. Oh, and yes, of course I’ll get you the laptop too.