Cards Against Humanity kicked off its annual “Holiday Bullshit” event today with Eight Sensible Gifts for Hanukkah—sensible, according to the website’s FAQ, because “You’re a grown woman now. It’s time you acted like one.”
The third annual iteration of the seasonal BS asks Cards Against Humanity fans to pay $15 (plus tax) for eight days worth of gifts, which will be delivered throughout December. Highlights from previous years have included game cards with subscribers’ names on them, lumps of coal, "miracle berries," and even one-square-foot of land on an island in Maine the company purchased and dubbed Hawaii 2.
Unfortunately, this will be the final year the popular card game will release a holiday collection.
“Honestly, it’s just a huge amount of work,” says co-creator Max Temkin of the process behind getting each year’s gifts together and out to subscribers. “We’re doing way more work than anyone could reasonably expect us to do.”
The decision to end the yearly gifting was not just about the work the CAH staff puts into it, though.
“I think there’s a fear of we don’t want to be doing the same old thing year after year,” Temkin says. “We have to keep pushing ourselves to do something bigger and bigger.”
CAH did not promote or announce today’s release, Temkin says, but rather left it to fans to find on their own. The site went live with 150,000 spots open; by 4 p.m., just over 80,000 were still available.
Temkin declined to say what will be on this year’s list, but one thing is certain: The Holiday Bullshit puzzle will be returning. Sandor Weisz, a Chicago–based puzzler and commissioner of The Mystery League, a company of creative puzzlemakers, will design it.
Temkin also says subscribers can expect a charity tie-in again. In previous years, CAH has teamed up with organizations such as the Sunlight Foundation and the Wikimedia Foundation. Those partnerships, Temkin said, give subscribers the chance to give back to the world “whether they want to or not.”
Read more about the company and its future in this 2014 story in Chicago magazine.