Thomas Allen Disselkamp, who also goes by Tom, has served as a product development specialist for the multinational corporation 3M for more than three decades. Outside of his work, Tom Disselkamp pursues multiple interests, including scuba diving, traveling, and playing parlor games.
Parlor games were a predecessor of board games and gained popularity during the Victorian age. Some of the most commonly played parlor games of that era are described below.
1. Blind Man’s Bluff. Blind man’s bluff was once a popular Christmas-time game. During each round, one blindfolded person is ‘It’ and attempts to catch the other players as they move around the room. If a player is caught, ‘It’ must identify the person by name. If the guess is correct, the caught player is blindfolded and becomes the new ‘It’. If the guess is incorrect, the person must be released and the game continues.
2. Twenty Questions. Still played today, the guessing game twenty questions originated as a Victorian pastime. Players take turns asking yes or no questions to figure out what object, person, or place one player is thinking of. The game ends just after one guess, so players must be certain before they attempt to guess the answer.
3. Snapdragon. This game has since fallen out of favor, but was once a very common tradition during the holiday season. Players gather around a bowl of brandy mixed with raisins or almonds. The bowl is then set on fire. The players would then attempt to grab a raisin from the flaming bowl and often got burned in process.
