So, I'm off to start searching through Christmas stores. Looking for things that may lend themselves to magic props, etc.

So, obvious starting ideas are, cut and restored garland, using Christmas ornaments instead of balls, and converting a stocking into an egg-bag kind of thing, and instead of an egg unless you want to use your egg-nogg jokes, use a Christmas ornament instead. Something with candles?

Feel free to jump in here.

I seem to have moved this line of thinking to my Creating New Magic thread in this same Secret Sessions section. Meaning Christmas and Thanksgiving ideas.

One idea with Linking Rings, as I said, is to say that Angels loaned them to you (if a family show). Another idea is to do multiplying candles. Anything with candles is good in a Christmas show. I'm coming up with a running gag for during a Christmas show, to use at odd moments. I'll explain it in the Creating New Magic thread.

My idea for a running gag for a Xmas show is to have a deep opaque bowl or a top hat on a table and a candle holder or conversely a stick of incense in a bud vase next to the hat. A platter is on a table off to the side. Also needed are a number of Xmas ornaments to which you've attached a piece of flash paper with a small piece of double-stick tape. These go in the hat.

This isn't a heavy mystery with a lot of proving. It is a visual, just to catch your breath and a chance for the audience to catch theirs between your main tricks.

So, light the candle or incense. Just reach in the hat and grasp an ornament with just the flash paper protruding. As you come out of the hat, light the flash paper on the candle or incense (you can set off flash paper on just that glow on the end of incense - that's why I like that way). After the flash paper burns off, show the ornament and put it on the platter for display. Be careful not to burn yourself or anything else with the flash paper.

Do this after each trick. Eventually there will be a number of ornaments on the platter. You don't have to mention anything about this. Just do it. This is known as a running-gag. It helps tie your show together.

...and if you are using not-too-large Christmas ornaments, at the end dump them all into a Santa's Hat and out drops a single GIANT multi-colored ornament (ala the venerable giant golf ball from hat). The hat is turned upside down and multicolored (metal) confetti flutters out.

BTW> I've not visited the Dollar (+) Store, yet, to see what's been brought in new for Christmas. I do have a couple of goodies from prior years, but am going to wait and see if the appropriate items are available in 2022.

Julie

That's great! That's the way to go.!

Well, I came up with another running gag for a Xmas show. This would be good for someone who is the M.C. of a show, but it would work for a 1-man show also. Together with the previous idea, and with only 4 or 5 main tricks, if you put these running gags in between the others, all of a sudden you have an actual show.

Audiences remember the "bits of business" more than the actual tricks, truth be told. Those are the things that show that you have a personality instead of just being someone who does a few tricks.

So here is the new running gag! Gift wrap your props! So before each of your main "pieces", you show the gift wrapped package and shake it and then look at it, and then shake it by your ear as if listening to it, then look at it some more and then pause as if thinking, and then tear the wrapping to shreds like a madman.

Finally you have one of your props for your next trick and you look at it some more then launch into that trick.

It may not seem like much, but the nature of a running gag is that when you get to the next phase of the running gag, the audience remembers what happened the last time. If you can come up with variations on a theme, so much the better. At least play with the places you put pauses and the lengths of the pauses, in each "bit". There you have it.

A Nest of Boxes would fit right in with the Christmas wrapping paper approach.

Santa's Helper(?)

A great idea. I never had one, but tried to make one (several times). Sure, that's a great prop for an Xmas show, or any show. Thanks, Julie!

I just thought of 2 things...first of which, notice how easily Julie picked a great prop. She knows her magic. Next thing, what would be inside the smallest box?
I am guessing the biggest ornament you can find that fits.

Also, let me take this opportunity to encourage lurkers to actually post some reaction as they pass through.

'Standard Nest of Boxes routine would finish with a borrowed watch or ring or coin in the smallest box. In a little larger set a cell phone can do the vanishing/reappearing. A borrowed $20 bill might be burned-up and then appear inside the ornament gregg suggested. If you are able to find any "glass" ornaments these days, break the ornament to produce the bill and maybe restore the ornament to bring things full circle.

Julie

That is the way to go then. Thank you Julie!

I had the idea of Snowstorm in China for a Xmas show. To get away from the Asian theme I'm suggesting instead of a fan, to make a shape out of cardboard somewhat like a stylized angel wing and glue on white feathers or cut Bristol board in the shape of feathers and glue on. Alternately you could take a wing from an angel costume for kids. Just one wing. May have to cut it down to a workable size.

The image of all the confetti snow filling the air can't hurt.

I just got back from the Everything Christmas store. The guy couldn't accept that I was just looking. "Do you want to open an account?" "Can I get you a shopping basket?".

My main reason for that trip, besides just looking, was to find out if they have Christman lights that are battery powered. I think you know why. (So there isn't an extension cord going to everything that will light up!) Well, I only found teeny tiny lights that were battery powered. Better than nothing. I also found very large plastic bells for decorations that got me thinking of Topas (sp?) who did the act with colored glasses and wands, then musical bells, and then produced an electric guitar and then one more set of sunglasses. It was THAT kind of bell, only large.

I'm late getting here but I was asked to do a winter theme at a library years ago and found I could do my usual routines with minimal tweaks. Without searching my files, these two come to mind.

I have a good kids-routine for Kovari's Perfect Match (similar to https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GB1L6QP) and made a custom one to show five winter items instead of ESP symbols.

I color-printed three sets of an igloo, a wool knit hat, a mug of hot chocolate, a snowman, and a pair of mittens. I glued them to spare double-backed cards and was good to go. Same fun routine, with different symbols. You could do the same for Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.

The other was with a lucky-cup routine I do. I usually use a 3" crystal pendulum to locate a "lucky penny" for my young helper to find the right cup with the prize. I just swapped that out for an acrylic snowflake ornament I found at a craft store (similar pic below). Anything on a string will do the job!

Click here to view attached image.

Really great thinking, Jerry. Christmas is coming up fast. Thanks.

Thoughts I had about tricks to do with what is at hand around the holidays include the 3-ball trick (2 in the hand, 1 in the pocket) with pine cones, or peppermint candies, or chestnuts. Or, after the part where they disappear, cup your hands together and shake and make 3 of another item appear. I've heard that the endless chain is good for parties. Every trick doesn't have to tie in with Xmas.

Well, I'll keep trying to think of items to conjure with at a Xmas party.

Still looking for ideas of things to do tricks with around Xmas. And so, I saw some ribbons and remembered there are ribbon tricks. See Tarbell. Sorry it is harder than I thought it would be.

I started looking through Xmas catalogs for ideas of things that could be used for a magic trick. One thing I noticed is jigsaw puzzles. How to use a jigsaw puzzle in a trick?

I thought of a way, just now. I also have two methods. I'll go into this tomorrow.