Family Christmas party game ideas needed?

I have a friend who does games for Christmas with her family every year, they do the minute to win it type of games.

Prizes are little things she's collected throughout the year from sales like candles, fidget spinners, candy, hand lotion, and $5 gift cards from places like itunes, fast food, etc.

You might even browse some baby shower games that could be adapted for Christmas like the clothespin game.

Last year, we started the tradition of doing "Ticky Tacky Houses" instead of gingerbread. They're made of Rice Krispy cereal and cut into a simple house shape. They stand on their own easily, then you just use a quick frosting to "glue" your candy. Then you have a small village. Ages 5-88 approved. The prize is a job well done and eating the candy as you go.

I guess it also depends on what kind of crowd you're dealing with. We like UNO (there's a dare type version too), Monopoly, Headbandz, Scene It, etc. Sorry, they're not holiday necessarily, but still lots of fun.

I like the “guess who I am” game. It’s actually an ice breaker but it works for any type of gathering too. You write popular Christmas character names on Hello My Name Is labels and stick one randomly on each person’s back as they arrive. They aren’t allowed to look in a mirror or read their own label, but they can ask each other person at the party two yes or no questions and try to guess who they are. Questions like, “Am I an animal?” or “Do I wear red?” are acceptable. Open ended questions are not. The first person to guess wins a prize, or if you want everyone to get something you could have a variety of small prizes/gifts wrapped and as each person guesses correctly they can choose a gift from the pile. First person to guess correctly gets first choice, second gets to pick next and so on.

Although I’ve never done it myself, the Saran Ball game sounds like it would be fun. We never have a big enough group to do it. You take a bunch of small gift items, things like lip balm, gift cards, ear buds, even those little bottles of booze or scratch off tickets, etc. (anything physically small will work), and starting at the center you roll the items one by one into what ends up being a giant wad of Saran Wrap. You want smaller lengths of the wrap and not just one big long one because smaller pieces take longer to get off, and you want to space out the prizes fairly well to make it a little harder. Keep adding prizes and wrap until you have a huge rat’s nest ball. To play you put two dice in a pan and those get passed around the circle. One person has the ball and can keep picking away at the wrap and unwinding to get to a prize until the person rolling gets doubles, then the ball and the dice are passed to the next person who gets a chance to unwind the ball until doubles are rolled again. Play continues until the ball is totally unwrapped. If you Google it or look on Pinterest you can find a lot of ideas and variations for this game and people who have played it all say it’s a ton of fun.

I think Costco sells the house kits that are already pre assembled.

We have a get-together with extended family—aunts, uncles, and every germeraltion of cousins, second cousins, removed cousins, etc. We play Left, Right, Center with quarters. So it’s $0.75 to play a round, which is affordable for anyone. It’s easy to play and only gets funnier if there’s drinking involved.

We do board games at Thanksgiving like Apples to Apples. There are so many group games nowadays that you can find a lot of fun ideas.

Left right Center. It is a really inexpensive game on Amazon. We buy in for $1.00 so not expensive and even little kids can play.

The Saran Wrap game. Fill the Saran Wrap ball with different inexpensive things. If you want to go big have every family kick in some cash (for our summer get together everyone kicked in $25.00 per family and we had a host of "great prizes." and you can fill it with gift cards, lotions, lip balms, full size candy bars, packs of gum etc. Young and old enjoy the game.

I second Left, Center, Right

Really fun game.

Farkle or Left, Right, Center.
Kahoot is super fun. My niece made a quiz about herself for her birthday. It was funny.

Jassy...I love the idea of the whammy gifts. I am totally going to do that.

ooh, you could do a team gingerbread house challenge... buy the cheap kits from the craft store, or just use graham crackers. To make it fun, have one person be blindfolded, and the other person has to direct what they do! (I saw something like that on a show of Restaurant Impossible, to show just how difficult it is to give complete instructions.)

or just have everyone decorate their gingerbread house blindfolded to see how they turn out.

We love the saran wrap ball, and after 2-3 years now, I think people would be upset if it didn't happen! I have 2 bags (one for DH's side, one for mine) hanging in my mudroom all year to collect things to wrap. My side is ages 12/14/17 and adult, DH's is 12 and adult, but for both, we just do a single ball, then people trade (or just give) after we're done.

Instead of gingerbread houses, I'd do just gingerbread men/women. Still fun to decorate, but way less hassle & expense.

Hallmark Christmas movie bingo!

😆 No, thank you for the extra information! I got the basic concept but wasn’t sure about how people take turns to unwrap. I guess I’d have to call it Glad Wrap Balls, because we don’t have Saran here. 😀