Christmas Traditions Old & New - Let the Games Begin!

The month of December can bring busy days and filled weekends. Whether you're shopping, decorating, mailing, cooking or creating handmade gifts, December can be a non-stop, fun-filled schedule. This includes parties--lots of parties! Besides the company of good friends and family, as well as the delicious food, parties often offer holiday games. Let's take a peek at some of these fun and funny ways to celebrate the season. 

First, the Christmas Gifting games:

Dirty Santa - This is a popular grab bag game (called many different names) in which party-goers are asked to bring a wrapped gift of a certain value. All gifts are placed together and guests take a gift one by one, unwrapping and showing his or her treasure to all guests. The next person can either choose another gift, or steal the one opened first. If a gift is stolen, the victim chooses another. The fun really kicks up when there are more gifts already identified than are wrapped. Many times there is a limit to how many times a specific gift can be stolen. And to make things fair, the first person to open a gift gets to steal from any of the gifts.

Rolling Snowball - This game has party guests sit in a circle. A ball of plastic wrap is passed from one person to the next. Inside of this "snowball" are small prizes. 

You can include candy, gum, lottery tickets, coins, gift cards, whatever your guests may be interested in. Once a guest receives the snowball, he or she must unwrap it to free the prizes. Oh, yes, there is a time limit to each person's turn, say ten seconds, so the faster they unwrap, the more prizes they gather. If the snowball still holds goodies after everyone's had a turn, the play continues until there is nothing left of it. (Photo credit : Facebook – Missie Bickel)

Lefty-Righty Game - This game takes more thought and preparation by the host, and also uses grab bag gifts. Guests sit or stand in a circle with the host in the middle, holding the grab bag gifts they brought. The host reads a story or poem, and every time the word RIGHT is said, guests pass their gifts to the right. When the word LEFT is uttered, gifts are passed to the left. Of course, the host will have written a story or poem ahead of time. You can click HERE for several different ones that you can personalize to fit your guests. When the story or poem is finished, guests can open what they hold. 

Christmas Lottery - 

This game uses several different ways to allow guests to attain their holiday gifts. My favorite is to use "coupons" that have guests trade the gifts in their hands with someone else, as in "Trade your gift with someone shorter than you." Check HERE for free printables.

Now we offer some Fun-4-Fun's-Sake games:

Besides the popular games like "Pin the Nose on Rudolph," and Christmas BINGO or Charades, you could try  a Snowman Wrap Relay with toilet paper (Photo credit: Party Wishes). For something a little less active, play Silver Bells, a matching game using Hershey's Kisses with small circular labels of Christmas symbols attached to the bottoms. 
In Snowman Bowling, ten 1 or 2 liter plastic bottles are painted as snowmen, and rolled up socks can be used to bowl the snowmen down.
For small gatherings, a game of Roll a Snowman can be played around the table, with each number of a die (1-6) representing a part of a snowman. To play, the die is tossed and draws that part of the snowman. That player continues rolling the die until they roll a number already rolled. Play is passed to the next person. To win, the player who rolls the last item needed to complete the snowman wins. So a person can roll five items for the snowman, but lose to another's lucky roll! More game details can be found HERE.
However you celebrate Christmas at your parties, games can break the ice, dole out grab bag gifts and create tons of merry memories. Let us know if you have a favorite game you'd like to share with us. We'd love to hear from you!