Rhymes with reason

Written in fading ink on yellowing index cards and Christmas stationery, an album filled with poems at 81-year-old Newport Beach resident Mimi MacGowan’s Bay Bay home is brimming with decades of family history in the form of humorous, rhyming verse.

“Ann loves to go to the show, and no doubt to read Thoreau, but she can no longer hide, because of what is inside, a secret few of us know, her love of 90210,” reads one poem, a tribute of one of MacGowan’s family member’s love of a certain teen television drama.

Other poems poke good-natured fun at one relative’s obsession with golf, or a beloved aunt’s waterlogged mishap in a canoe.

For more than 100 years, the MacGowan-Woods-Kugle family of Newport Beach has carried on an annual tradition of writing poems to one another and exchanging gag gifts.

The tradition use to be carried out each year at Christmas, but has since been moved to a few days afterward; the family has grown so large, it’s just too hard to get everyone together on Christmas, MacGowan said.

This year, more than 20 family members will gather for the annual event today at the Beach House Restaurant in Laguna Beach.

“You have to have something to do at a family get-together other than stare at each other,” said MacGowan, who remembers gathering around her grandmother’s dining room table in Los Angeles on Christmas night for the annual family “Funnies.”

“It’s a lot of fun — everyone always says they have a good time, so we keep doing it,” said MacGowan’s younger brother, Balboa Island resident George Woods.

The tradition began with MacGowan and Woods’ great-grandmother, Ada Butts of Shreveport, La., more than 100 years ago.

Butts was a widow with four young daughters when she began writing poems for them at Christmas time.

The tradition has been handed down to each generation of the family ever since.

The family typically meets for a meal a few days after Christmas to exchange the poems and small gifts.

The rules are simple; the poem and gag gift can’t be mean-spirited.

Each relative receives two poems and writes two poems. Every poem is accompanied by a small gag gift to go along with the theme of the poem.

The family makes a game of guessing what the gift is after the poem is read aloud.

“Some of them are funnier than others; some aren’t very good at all,” Woods said.

The poems are top-secret until read at the family gathering, although MacGowan recently confessed to Woods that she is writing her poem to him this year.

“It better be good,” Woods said to her.

The poems have changed over the years as the family has grown and changed. MacGowan was amazed when one of the younger generation of family members wrote a haiku for last year’s party — a family first in a 100-year-old tradition.

“We enjoyed it as children and as parents, and now we are enjoying it as grandparents,” MacGowan said.