One of the biggest holiday traditions in my family, outside the usual overindulgence of greasy food and gifts nobody really needs: Board games. Every Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember, my family would gather around the table for their post-dinner black coffee, grab some wooden letters out of a sack and spend an hour or two trying to become the Scrabble Christmas Champion. Other times, Monopoly got the nod. Fact was, we were all growing older, and save for our family ties, maybe we were growing apart. With less and less common conversational ground between relatives, there’s nothing better than a board game to get everyone mingling.

Course, there’s one small problem with this ideal if you come from a family as large as mine – and certainly, many of you come from large families. Board games take up a lot of room, and not everyone at the table can actually play them. You’re faced with a situation where the players eat away at 50% of the holiday table’s real estate, knocking over all the wine decanters and coffee cups, completely oblivious to the fact that the non-playing folks were openly mapping their demise at the very same table, annoyed with having to use the Vermont Avenue deed card as a coaster.

Don’t fret – there’s a perfect solution. If you haven’t been to a toy store in ages, you’ve probably forgotten that Milton Bradley (the company that makes pretty much every board game worth devoting three hours of our lives to) produces travel sized versions of all their biggest hits. Now you can play Connect Four at the dinner table without invading Uncle George’s personal space!

Obviously, games like Monopoly aren’t too conducive to being shrunk down, but virtually every other game Milton Bradley relies on for their annual net revenue has been given the mini treatment. Even childlike wonders like Hungry Hungry Hippos have been shrunk down to a more negotiable size, and before you run to the toy store with your fingers crossed, yes, they actually make travel-sized Battleship, too.

The travel games generally follow the same rules and schematics as their larger counterparts, save for a few changes that make playing in such a small area easier. (Hungry Hungry Hippos, for instance, eliminates two of the original four pastel colored hippos in favor of a strictly two-player game) The Milton Bradley Travel Games are incredibly affordable (most of them retail for just five bucks), and they continue to be a great way to make an already special holiday celebration all the more…well, competitive.

PS: I love you dream woman.

PPS: Milton Bradley Travel Games make exxxcellent stocking stuffers. Even Milton Bradley says so -- check out this entry from last year's Advent Calendar, including a short review and download of a Milton Bradley T.G. commercial featuring Santa rolling the dice.