Christmas Games

It’s Christmas! … almost. Which means lots of socialising and plenty of excuses to play games. We LOVE games, whether it's board games, word games or just playing about trying the latest TikTok festive game. 

Play brings people together, it gives everyone something to bond over, something to laugh about and a shared joyful experience (unless you’re a sore loser!). Play is also a nice break from conversation and a great way to break the ice with the in-laws or bond with 90 year old Yvette over trouser snakes in planes (yes, this happened, yes it was funny). 

It’s no surprise that table games are super popular at this time of year. We always get asked for recommendations so here’s our roundup of all our favourite things to play below. We’ve broken this into “nothing needed” and “products needed” so remember to add what you need to your Christmas lists! 

Nothing needed play  

Word at a time story 

Go around the table and one by one as everyone says one word to create each sentence of the story. Sometimes it’s handy to start off with the first few people saying “once”, person 2: “upon”, person 3: “a”, person 4: “time” and then continue on from there. 

Complaint letter 

Split into two pairs. The first pair speaks one word at a time and are saying aloud a complaint to a company. The second pair and the company replying to the complaint. Everyone else can call out who they think they should be complaining to (e.g Tesco) and about what (a lack of pigs in blankets). Go back and forth two times (or more if you want to keep it going!) 

Cereal box game 

A Jackson classic! Get a cereal box and put it in the middle of the room, you have to pick it up with your teeth and nothing touching the floor except your feet. Each round you cut off an inch or two from the box. Make sure you stretch - it gets a lot harder the lower you go! 

Two truths one lie 

Everyone says two truthful statements and one lie. You have to guess which one is the lie. 

Questions only 

Split in half (either side of the dinner table works well for this). The first person from each group starts and has to have a conversation with the other person but only speaking in questions. If there’s any hesitation, repeated questions or statements you are out and the next person from your team steps in. The aim is to have as many people left in your team after a certain amount of time 2 mins is a good amount to start) 

World’s worst

Pick a profession then anyone can either call out or act out a line they may say to make them the worst at it. 

For example: world’s worst hairdresser

1. Sorry I got distracted looking out the window 

2. My hands can’t stop shaking today 

3. If it goes badly, we’ll just get you a wig 

4. Van Gogh didn’t need his ear either 

Keep going until you run out and then switch to another profession. 

Party quirks 

Someone leaves the room whilst you allocate a famous person or character to everyone else. The person then returns to the room where they are having a “party” and has to guess who each of their guests are. 

You can make this trickier by giving quirks or objects instead of people for the guests to play. E.g an excited whisk or a mop who sneezes whenever a colour is mentioned. 

20 questions / Heads up 

One person picks an object and everyone else has a total of 20 questions between them to guess what it is. The person can only answer Yes or No to the questions. 

You can add categories to this if you want to make it easier e.g famous people, objects, animals etc. 

Who am I?

Similar to questions only. Everyone writes a name on a piece of paper and (without them seeing) sticks it to someone else’s head. They then have to guess who they are. You go around the circle and ask questions (Yes or No answers only) until someone gets their person right. 

Hot and Cold words

One person (clue giver) picks a target word. The guessers guess what that word is and the clue giver can only reply Hot or Cold if the word feels closer/ further in meaning to the target word. Keep going until you guess the word. 

Products needed play:

We LOVE board games and Christmas is a great time to get out some of our more silly party games. These ones are simple to pick up and explain and super fun. (We'll do another post for full on, hours of play board games another day).  

Herd Mentality

You have to try and guess what your family are thinking. But no one wants the pink cow! 

Men at Work

Compete to be employee of the month or feel the wrath of boss Rita. You take turns to balance and stack beams, workers, bricks and more without anything tumbling off. 

P for Pizza

A word based game where you have to shout out words beginning with certain letters. E.g.P is for pizza. Sometimes we play this by calling out the cards if we’re being lazy on the sofa and don’t want to sit around a board. Just call out the option and the first one to answer wins. 

Don’t Get Got

The sneaky game where you all get secret objectives to get done during the day without anyone calling you out on it. One of mine was “get someone to correct you for singing a christmas carol wrong” so I made sure I got the words wrong when we sang the 12 days of Christmas. You satisfyingly get to shout “you got got” when you get someone to, unknowingly, help you complete your objecting 

Gutterhead

Warning: this one is RUDE. You work in teams to act out, mime or draw rude words or sayings. There was something hilarious about Grandpa drawing his foreskin on Christmas eve! 

Exploding Kittens

You draw cards and don’t want to pick up an exploding kitten. SImple. Long the way there are cards meaning you can make people pick up more cards, skip a turn etc. to help you. 

Fluxx  

There are SO many different themed versions of Fluxx  zombie, pirate, chemistry, Monty Python. How about a game with no rules. Yet all the rules! In flux you add and change the rules as you go! Starts simple, but madness and fun ensues! 

Bucket of Doom

Similar to cards against humanity in how you play this. Each round there is a “doom” card (way you will die) and each player selects a card from their hand to explain how they will dodge death. 

Cash N Guns

You get to point foam guns at each other! You're gangsters who have just completed a heist and are dividing up the loot, you need to bluff your way to getting the most loot.

Chicken Vs Hotdog

A very active party game where you have to do different flips or throws of the chicken and hot dog to win.