20 Funny Christmas Games for the Whole Family

If you’ve ever sat through a Christmas party where the most exciting thing that happened was someone refilling the chip bowl, these funny Christmas games for the whole family are about to change everything.

We’re talking full-belly laughs, grandma nearly falling off her chair, and the dog running away from all the screaming — the good kind.

Every single game on this list is clean enough for the seven-year-old AND hilarious enough that the adults are still texting about it in February.

I tested most of these with my own chaotic extended family (three generations, one very opinionated uncle, and a golden retriever who thinks every game is about her), so I can confirm: they actually work.

Some require zero supplies, some need a quick print, and a few will have you rooting around for pantyhose and cotton balls at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Worth it.

Bookmark this page, grab your 2025 Christmas Gift Guide for stocking stuffers to use as prizes, and let’s get this party started.

1. Reverse Christmas Charades

If regular charades is a little too dignified for your family (and let’s be honest, whose family is?), Reverse Christmas Charades is the chaotic upgrade you didn’t know you needed.

Instead of one person acting while everyone guesses, the whole team acts out the Christmas word or phrase simultaneously — while just ONE poor soul tries to guess what on earth is happening. Picture six people all pretending to be Rudolph at the same time.

Absolute pandemonium. In the best way.

Divide your group into teams of four to six players. One person is the guesser and turns away or closes their eyes while the host reveals the Christmas word — think ‘eggnog,’ ‘Frosty the Snowman,’ ‘wrapping paper,’ or ‘Christmas morning meltdown.’

The rest of the team acts it out silently and all at once. The guesser has sixty seconds to call out the right answer. Teams rotate guessers each round and score a point for every correct guess.

Write your words on slips of paper beforehand or use a phone app to flash the prompts.

The reason this works so beautifully is that everyone is acting at the same time, which means there’s no performance anxiety — even shy guests get swept up in the group silliness.

It’s also visually hilarious to watch from the outside, which means people waiting their turn are equally entertained. Pro tip: throw in a couple of absurdly difficult phrases like ‘the Grinch’s heart growing three sizes’ and watch what happens.

Truly a top-tier funny Christmas game for the whole family.

2. Christmas Mad Libs

Christmas Mad Libs is the game that will have grandpa crying laughing before he even realizes what happened.

One player reads the prompts out loud — asking for a noun, a verb, an adjective, a silly sound — and fills in the blanks without showing anyone the story.

Then they read the completed tale aloud, and suddenly Santa is described as a ‘sweaty, grumbling creature who delivers rotten cabbage on a flaming tractor.’ The whole table loses it every single time.

Print one sheet per player or per pair. The sheet features a short Christmas story (about Santa’s Christmas Eve journey, a family decorating disaster, or an elf orientation day at the North Pole) with key words blanked out.

A small label beneath each blank tells the player what type of word to supply — noun, adjective, verb, animal sound, family member’s name, etc.

Players fill in all their blanks before the story is read aloud, so no one knows the context until the big reveal. That’s the whole beautiful trick of it.

This is a brilliant game to kick off the evening because it requires zero competition, zero physical ability, and creates an instant inside joke your family will reference all year. (‘Remember when Dad said ‘butt trumpet’ and it ended up being Santa’s magic sleigh sound?’)

Make it even better by theming each story to your own family — swap in your town name, your dog’s name, your cousin’s most infamous Christmas moment. Personalization takes it from funny to legendary.

3. Santa Beard Cotton Ball Race

This is the game where someone’s grandma inevitably wins and becomes a legend. Each player gets a giant dollop of petroleum jelly (or shaving cream, if you want true chaos) smeared on their chin, and a bowl of cotton balls sits at arm’s length.

The goal: use only your chin to scoop as many cotton balls as possible and transfer them to an empty bowl across the table within 60 seconds. No hands. Faces only.

The cotton balls are so light and fluffy that they go everywhere except where you want them, and everyone watching will be absolutely losing their minds.

You’ll need a jar of petroleum jelly, two bowls per player, and a big bag of cotton balls. Set everything up at a table or on a tray on the floor.

Smear a generous amount of jelly on each participant’s chin right before their turn — don’t be stingy, the jelly is the whole mechanic. Start the timer and GO.

Count cotton balls at the end of each turn and keep a running tally on a whiteboard or paper. The player with the most cotton balls wins bragging rights and probably a photo that will be the family Christmas card for the next decade.

Why does this work so well? It’s genuinely difficult (cotton balls are lighter than air, I promise), it looks absolutely ridiculous to watch, and there’s zero skill gap between a ten-year-old and a fifty-year-old. Everyone is equally terrible and equally hilarious.

Keep a pack of wipes nearby for post-game cleanup — petroleum jelly and dignity both need a little time to recover. Give bonus points for the most creative chin-scooping technique.

4. Christmas Would You Rather

Christmas Would You Rather sounds chill and low-key, but within three questions it will have revealed that your brother-in-law would genuinely rather eat a fruitcake every day for a year than listen to ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ one more time — and suddenly everyone has opinions.

This game works beautifully as a warm-up while people are still arriving, as a between-courses table game, or as a standalone laugh-fest that sparks real debate.

It’s the kind of funny Christmas game for the whole family that needs no explanation and no equipment beyond a printed sheet.

Print one sheet per person. Each sheet lists 15 festive ‘Would You Rather’ dilemmas, each with two options clearly spelled out and a blank box beside each choice for the player to circle or tick their answer.

After everyone has filled out their sheet, go around the table and read each question aloud — players reveal their answers and defend their choices. Questions range from silly (would you rather wrap every present while wearing oven mitts, or address every card in crayon?)

to surprisingly philosophical (would you rather always get the PERFECT gift but never be surprised, or always be surprised but the gift is always slightly wrong?).

The real magic is in the discussion — people argue passionately about completely ridiculous hypothetical Christmas situations, and it reveals so much about who everyone actually is (in the most entertaining possible way).

You can play it competitively by seeing which answer matches the majority for each question, or just play it for laughs with no scoring at all. Either way, everyone will have something to say, and that’s exactly the point.

5. Wrap a Person as a Christmas Tree

This is pure, joyful, chaotic madness and it is my personal favorite on the entire list (tbh I may have volunteered to be the tree three years running).

One person stands with arms slightly out to the sides while their teammates have exactly three minutes to transform them into a Christmas tree using nothing but wrapping paper, tinsel, ribbon, paper chains, and stick-on bows. The results are always spectacular and never, ever dignified.

Split into teams of three to five.

Each team gets an identical supply bag containing: one roll of green wrapping paper or green streamers, one bag of tinsel, one roll of ribbon, a sheet of self-adhesive bows and star stickers, and a paper star for the top.

The ‘tree’ person stands very still (good luck) while teammates go absolutely feral decorating them. Set a three-minute timer and judge the results on Most Festive, Most Creative, and Most Structurally Unsound.

A panel of non-competing guests makes the perfect judging committee — or just vote as a group.

The genius of this game is that it’s funny on multiple levels at once: the frantic wrapping, the tree person trying not to laugh, the inevitable moment when everything falls off, and the final reveal photos that will be group-chat material until next Christmas.

Use a phone to take team photos as the big finale — those pictures are the real prize.

Hot tip from a seasoned tree: wear an old outfit because streamers and tinsel get EVERYWHERE and some of it will still be in your hair on New Year’s Eve.

6. Awkward Family Christmas Bingo

Regular bingo is fine. Awkward Family Christmas Bingo, though? That’s a sport.

Instead of numbers, each square on the card is filled with a painfully relatable holiday scenario — ‘Someone argues about the thermostat,’ ‘Uncle brings up politics at dinner,’ ‘A child cries because the gift wasn’t what they wanted,’ ‘Someone falls asleep before dessert,’ ‘A regifted item is spotted.’

Players silently mark off squares as the actual Christmas gathering unfolds around them. It’s like a live-action scavenger hunt through your family’s greatest hits.

Print one unique card per player (each card has the same 25 squares but in a randomized different order so no two cards are identical — shuffle the grid before printing multiples).

Players carry their cards in a pocket or keep them at their seat, quietly marking off squares throughout the event. No need to announce anything — just watch, wait, and mark. When someone gets five in a row, they stand up and yell ‘BINGO!’

and then must read their winning squares aloud to prove it. This part alone is worth the price of admission.

What makes this bingo variant special is that it turns your family’s reliable holiday quirks into entertainment rather than stress. It gives kids, teens, and adults all the same job: pay attention and try to win.

It also means that when Uncle Dave starts his annual speech about gas prices, instead of groaning, someone at the table is secretly pumping their fist under the table because ‘someone gives an unsolicited opinion about current events’ just got crossed off. Game changer. Literally.

7. Reindeer Nose (Pantyhose Toss)

Fair warning: this game will produce the single funniest photos of your entire Christmas.

One player pulls a leg of pantyhose over their head — yes, the whole leg — and a large red ornament ball is placed in the dangling toe end, which now swings in front of their face like the world’s least graceful pendulum.

Their goal is to swing the ornament into a row of water bottles or small targets without using their hands. It looks exactly as ridiculous as it sounds, and it is absolutely perfect.

You’ll need one pair of pantyhose per player (or one leg cut off and tied at the top), one large lightweight red ornament ball per player, and six to eight plastic water bottles or empty toilet roll tubes to set up as ‘reindeer targets.’

Set the bottles in a row about two feet in front of the player.

Give each player one minute to knock down as many bottles as possible using only the swinging ornament on the end of the pantyhose — wiggling their head and neck to create momentum. Count the fallen bottles and move to the next player.

Highest count wins.

This is a genuine crowd-pleaser across ALL age groups because it requires zero prior skill and maximum weird movement. Grandparents are often surprisingly good at it (hip mobility, apparently). Kids think it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen an adult do.

And whoever’s wearing the pantyhose always looks so deeply committed to winning, which makes everyone else laugh even harder. Stock up on extra ornament balls in case any escape — they bounce, and so does the laughter.

8. Finish the Christmas Lyric

You think you know every Christmas carol ever written. You’ve been humming them since October (don’t pretend you haven’t).

But the moment someone hands you a sheet with the first half of a lyric and you have to write the rest from memory — your brain goes completely, hilariously blank.

Finish the Christmas Lyric is the printable game that will expose every fake Christmas music fan in your family, and it is so deeply satisfying.

Each printed sheet shows 16 partial Christmas song lyrics, with the first line or phrase printed and a blank line below for the player to complete the lyric from memory.

The answer key lives in tiny, light-grey italics at the very bottom of the page so the host can check answers, but it’s far enough away and low-contrast enough that it doesn’t spoil the game. Players work individually, in silence, with a five-minute timer running.

Then answers are revealed out loud — the host reads the correct lyric and players score a point for each one they nailed word-for-word (or near enough). Ties are broken with a sudden-death lyric-off.

The fun factor here comes from overconfidence colliding with reality. People who swear they know every word of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ suddenly can’t remember anything past ‘all of the other reindeer.’

Classic Christmas music fans will be stunned, casual listeners will be outraged, and whoever gets the most right will be insufferable about it for at least three days. Perfect.

Keep this one in your back pocket for the budget-friendly Christmas party playbook — it costs literally nothing to print.

9. Speak Like an Elf Challenge

The rules are deceptively simple: you must answer every question, give every instruction, and make every announcement in the highest, squeakiest, most cartoonishly enthusiastic elf voice you can muster — for an entire round. Fail to stay in character and you’re out.

Or you drink a cup of egg nog. Your household, your rules.

The Speak Like an Elf Challenge is the easiest game to set up (no supplies whatsoever) and reliably one of the hardest to stop once it starts, because hearing Grandpa explain Christmas dinner plans in a tiny elf voice is simply one of life’s great pleasures.

One player is designated the Elf Master for each round. They ask the current ‘elf’ a series of increasingly elaborate questions: ‘Can you describe exactly what happened last Christmas morning?’

‘Please explain how to make hot chocolate as if you’re training a new North Pole recruit.’ ‘Tell us your honest opinion of fruitcake.’ The elf must answer fully and in character.

Other players can ask follow-up questions to trip them up or make them laugh and break character. Time each turn for 90 seconds and rotate through the group. Award a candy cane to anyone who completes a full 90-second turn without breaking.

What makes this a genuinely funny Christmas game for the whole family is that it has absolutely no skill ceiling — or floor. Being bad at the elf voice is just as funny as being good at it.

Shy guests can keep their answers brief; theatrical ones will deliver a full elf monologue that has the room in tears. It also requires zero prep, zero supplies, and can be played anywhere from the dinner table to the living room floor.

Speaking of no-cost fun, pair this with a few printable games and you’ve got a full evening for essentially nothing.

10. Guess the Christmas Movie Sheet

This one is for the Christmas movie obsessives in your family — and also for the people who swear they’ve never seen any of them (looking at you, Dad, you absolutely cried at ‘The Holiday’).

Each row on the sheet shows a vague, slightly cryptic one-line plot description of a famous Christmas film. Players read the clue and write their best guess for the movie title on the blank line.

The clues are written to be just tricky enough that even movie buffs will second-guess themselves.

The sheet features 14 movie clues, each followed by a clearly visible blank line for the player’s answer.

For example: ‘A cynical New York elf discovers family is more important than candy breakfasts’ — the answer (Elf) appears only in the tiny answer key at the very bottom of the page in light-grey italics, numbered to match the clues.

Players fill out their sheets individually within five minutes, then answers are revealed and scored. Bonus round: for every correct answer, the player must quote a line from that film. If they can’t, the point goes to the person on their left.

Scoring turns this from a passive quiz into a lively debate, because people will argue passionately that their slightly wrong answer should still count — and those arguments are often funnier than the game itself.

You can make it easier for younger players by adding a word bank at the bottom (just list all 14 film titles in scrambled order).

Pair this sheet with the Finish the Christmas Lyric game and you’ve got a full pop-culture Christmas trivia station that runs itself while you top up the mulled wine.

11. Christmas Movie Bad Acting Contest

Everyone has a favorite terrible Christmas movie moment — the overblown cry, the dramatic declaration of love in the snow, the shocked face when the gift is revealed. Now it’s time to recreate them, intentionally badly, for points.

The Christmas Movie Bad Acting Contest is exactly what it sounds like: players are assigned iconic Christmas movie scenes and must perform them with the maximum possible theatrical overacting — think soap opera meets community theater meets a child performing for attention.

The worse, the better.

Before the party, write ten to fifteen classic Christmas movie scenes on slips of paper: the leg lamp revelation (A Christmas Story), Buddy the Elf discovering he’s not a real elf, Kevin McCallister’s screaming face in the mirror, the Grinch’s heart growing, a dramatic slow-motion gift unwrapping.

Players draw a slip, get thirty seconds to prepare (loosely), then perform.

The audience scores each performance out of ten — but the scoring criteria are Commitment (10 = full soul on the line), Badness (10 = gloriously terrible), and Funniness (10 = audience is crying). Total the three scores and crown the winner.

This is one of those games where the people who swear they’re terrible at performing are often the runaway winners, because raw commitment to being dramatic is the only skill required.

No memorization, no actual talent needed — just willingness to throw yourself into a thirty-second bit in front of your family. Which, honestly, is how most Christmas dinners go anyway.

Award the winner something suitably dramatic: a tinsel crown, a paper certificate, or first pick of the dessert table.

12. Left Right Christmas Gift Pass

This is one of those games that seems calm and orderly for about forty-five seconds, and then absolute beautiful mayhem sets in.

Everyone sits in a circle, each person holding a wrapped gift (these can be gag gifts, white elephant prizes, or joke presents — the sillier the better).

Someone reads a specially written Christmas story aloud, and every time the word ‘left’ appears in the story, everyone passes their gift one person to the LEFT. Every time ‘right’ appears, everyone passes RIGHT.

The story is written to include ‘left’ and ‘right’ constantly, so gifts are whipping around the circle at a dizzying pace.

Write or download a Left Right Christmas story in advance — they’re about 300 to 400 words long and packed with misdirection. A classic opening might go: ‘On Christmas Eve, Santa sat right down in his chair and looked LEFT at his list…’

The reader should go at a brisk pace so the passing gets frantic. At the end of the story, everyone opens whatever gift is in their hands.

The mix of random redistribution means nobody ends up with what they started with, which is kind of the perfect Christmas metaphor if you think about it (which you shouldn’t, just laugh).

This works wonderfully as an opener or a finale, and it’s especially perfect if you have gifts to distribute anyway — it turns a normal present exchange into a hilarious event.

Wrap a few extra joke gifts (a single sock, a very aggressive fruit cake, a coupon for ‘one free unsolicited opinion’) so the unwrapping reveals are as funny as the passing.

Pro tip: keep the gifts roughly the same size and weight so nobody’s trying to pass a giant box across a crowded circle — unless that IS the joke, in which case, carry on.

13. Christmas Heads Up

If you’ve ever played Ellen DeGeneres’s Heads Up app, you already know the basic concept — but the Christmas version played live with your family, with everyone shouting clues and someone holding a card to their forehead, hits differently.

One player holds a Christmas-themed card (or their phone with the app) against their forehead so they can’t see it. The card reads ‘Gingerbread Man,’ ‘Christmas Eve,’ ‘Ho Ho Ho,’ ‘Die Hard’ (yes, it counts).

The rest of the group gives clues — words, sounds, actions — without saying the actual word. The guesser fires out guesses until the timer runs out or they nail it.

You can play this with the official app set to the Christmas category, or make your own cards by writing holiday words and phrases on index cards: Christmas traditions, Christmas films, carol titles, holiday foods, gift ideas. Give each round sixty seconds.

Play in teams where the whole team helps give clues, or play individually with the group helping one person at a time. Score one point per correct guess and play until everyone has had two or three turns as the guesser.

Whoever has the most points at the end gets to pick the next holiday game (power move).

The reason Christmas Heads Up is one of the best funny Christmas games for the whole family is that the giving-clues role is just as fun as guessing.

You end up with four people simultaneously acting out ‘figgy pudding’ or making reindeer sounds for ‘Prancer,’ and the chaos is genuinely joyful.

Younger kids can participate by giving clue words easily, older guests can make the clues more elaborate, and everyone is always laughing — whether the guesser gets it right or spectacularly, hilariously wrong.

14. Christmas Charades Relay

Regular Christmas charades is fun. Christmas Charades Relay is regular charades injected with about three espressos and a lot of competitive energy. Here’s the twist: instead of one person acting and a whole team guessing, you have a relay chain.

Person A acts for Person B only. Person B then has to act out what they THINK they saw — for Person C. Person C acts for Person D.

By the time the final person guesses, the original ‘Christmas pudding’ has mutated into ‘a walrus eating a snowglobe.’ The telephone-style drift is where all the comedy lives.

Set up teams of four to six players in a line. Only the first person sees the Christmas word on the card. They silently act it out for Person Two, who watches carefully.

When the first actor sits down, Person Two must immediately act out their interpretation of what they saw — for Person Three only, without conferring. Continue down the line. The last person states their guess aloud, then the original word is revealed.

Play five rounds per team and award points for any team whose final guess actually matches the original word (spoiler: it rarely does, and that is fine, that is the game).

What makes this a step above regular charades is the gradual mutation — watching a perfectly clear ‘opening Christmas presents’ transform through four people into what one family called ‘a confused penguin at a haunted buffet’ is peak Christmas chaos.

It’s also brilliant because every player is only responsible for one act — nobody has to stand up and perform alone in front of a huge group, which makes it more inclusive for shyer guests.

Award the funniest mutation a special prize alongside the winning team.

15. Bow Making Blindfold Race

You know how you tie a perfect bow on a gift when you can see what you’re doing? Turns out the whole ‘seeing’ part is pretty load-bearing.

The Bow Making Blindfold Race challenges players to blindfold themselves and tie a ribbon bow on a small gift box within sixty seconds. The results are wonderful disasters. Half the bows end up tied to the player’s own wrist.

One end of the ribbon somehow ends up in their hair. The gift box has escaped to the floor. Meanwhile, the audience is absolutely beside themselves.

Set up identical stations for two to four players at a time. Each station gets one medium gift box with a lid, a pre-cut length of ribbon (about sixty centimetres — long enough to work with, short enough to be a challenge), and a blindfold.

On the count of three, players are blindfolded and must find the box, position the ribbon, and tie what they believe is a presentable bow. At sixty seconds, blindfolds come off.

Bow quality is judged by non-competing guests on a scale of ‘Actually Not Bad’ to ‘That Is Not a Bow, That Is a Cry for Help.’

This is one of those games that sounds almost too simple to be entertaining — and then you actually watch someone blindfolded confidently tying a bow on their own hand and you realize you’re having the best time.

Run tournament-style brackets if your group is large, or just rotate everyone through one at a time and keep a photo record of each bow for an end-of-night gallery reveal. Winner gets to pick the dessert.

Loser has to wrap one more gift the regular way.

16. Worst Gift Ever Contest

Every family has a vault of terrible gift stories. The fruitcake that was definitely from the previous year. The self-help book with a very pointed title. The gift card to a restaurant that closed in 2009.

The Worst Gift Ever Contest invites every guest to share their most spectacularly bad gift story — and then everyone votes on who wins the crown. It’s less a game and more a collective therapy session disguised as entertainment, and it is absolute gold.

Go around the circle and give each person sixty to ninety seconds to describe their worst Christmas gift ever. Encourage details: who gave it, what they were possibly thinking, and what expression they had to hold on their face while unwrapping it.

After everyone has shared, do a quick vote — raise hands or use folded paper ballots for anonymous voting if your family is particularly polite.

The person with the most votes wins a prize (ideally something deliberately bad — a single serving of mixed nuts, a novelty calendar from two years ago, a pen that barely works).

This is also a great time to check out what to actually buy parents for Christmas next year so nobody ends up with another story to tell.

The magic of this game is that it levels the playing field completely — no skills required, no prep, no supplies. It’s purely about storytelling, and almost everyone has at least one truly spectacular gift-gone-wrong story that they’ve been waiting for permission to tell.

The stories get funnier as the evening goes on, and the collective commiserating creates an instant bond. Run this one after dinner when everyone is relaxed and the eggnog has done its job.

17. Jingle in the Bells (Shake Off)

This is THE game that will make your Christmas party legendary. Each player straps an empty tissue box (secured to a belt or tied with ribbon) around their waist, positioned at the back just above the hips.

Eight to ten jingle bells are placed inside the box. The mission: shake, wiggle, dance, and shimmy until every single bell has jingle-jangled its way OUT of the box — without using your hands. One minute on the clock. Go.

The resulting spectacle cannot be described in polite language; it can only be witnessed.

Set up one station with a belt (or piece of ribbon long enough to tie around a waist), one empty tissue box with a pre-cut hole in the bottom, and ten jingle bells.

Secure the box to the belt with tape or by threading ribbon through holes punched in the box sides.

Load the bells, fasten around the player’s waist at the back, start the music (may we suggest ‘Jingle Bells’ on repeat at maximum volume), and set the timer for sixty seconds. Count bells on the floor at the end.

Players who empty the box completely in under sixty seconds win the big prize. You can have tiered prizes based on how many bells escape: ten bells = champion, eight bells = excellent, five bells = respectable, fewer than five = more eggnog required.

The brilliance of this game — beyond the obvious visual comedy — is that every technique looks completely different. Some people do tiny quick shakes. Some go full line-dance.

One family member will inevitably attempt a move that defies description and becomes a family nickname that sticks for years. It’s inclusive because physical size and fitness level don’t actually predict success (it really is all about hip mobility and commitment).

The bells are cheap, the tissue boxes are free, and the memories are priceless.

18. Funniest Family Christmas Memory Vote

This is the wholesome, slightly emotional, mostly hilarious game that sneaks up on you. Each guest writes down their funniest or most absurd family Christmas memory on a slip of paper — anonymously.

The host collects all the slips, shuffles them, and reads them out one by one. The group votes for the funniest, the most relatable, and the most unbelievably true. It sounds simple because it is, and it works beautifully because everyone’s family is quietly spectacular.

Distribute small slips of paper and pens. Give everyone three minutes to write their memory — remind them to keep it anonymous and funny (not traumatic, not pointed at anyone in the room in a mean-spirited way — we’re here for laughs, not therapy bills).

The host collects, shuffles well, and reads aloud one at a time in their best storytelling voice. After each one, hold a quick hands-up vote for whether it’s ‘Gold,’ ‘Silver,’ or ‘Bronze.’ Tally the Golds and crown the winner at the end.

If anyone confesses their own story, they get a bonus point for bravery.

What elevates this above a simple sharing circle is the anonymity, which means even quieter guests contribute something genuinely personal, and the host reading all stories means no one has to perform.

It also generates incredible callbacks for the rest of the evening — ‘Wait, is the turkey-in-the-garage story from 1997 YOURS?’ is a conversation that can last forty-five minutes.

If your family is light on collective Christmas history (maybe it’s a new group or a first gathering), prompt people to write a funny Christmas memory from any year, any family — it still works.

19. Guess the Christmas Scent

Turns out the human nose is much less reliable than we all think — especially after eggnog — and nothing proves it faster than the Guess the Christmas Scent challenge.

Prepare six to ten small jars or cups, each containing something with a distinct holiday aroma: cinnamon sticks, cloves, peppermint extract on a cotton ball, orange peel, pine needles, gingerbread spice, vanilla extract, mulled wine spices, frankincense oil, fresh cranberries.

Players are blindfolded and must smell each cup and write their guess. The person with the most correct identifications wins.

Prepare your scent stations the night before if you can, so the aromas are strong. Use small opaque cups, jars with lids, or film canisters — anything that prevents visual peeking. Number each container. Players record their guesses on a numbered answer sheet.

Give thirty seconds per scent, or let people go at their own pace through all ten. The host reveals the answers at the end.

For a more chaotic version, skip the numbered sheet and just call players up one at a time to smell all the cups and announce their guesses live, with the audience watching (and the scents deliberately include a tricky one like butterscotch that nobody can quite place).

This game works beautifully as a sensory breather between more physical activities — it’s calm enough to play while people are still seated, but produces genuine moments of comedy when someone confidently announces that cloves are ‘definitely mulberry’ or identifies peppermint as ‘kind of like toothpaste, but festive.’

Set it up as a little side station that people can drift over to during the party, or run it as a formal timed event.

Either way, the humble nose will be exposed, and everyone will be a little humbled — in the best possible way.

20. Most Likely To: Family Holiday

This is the game where all family truths come out, everyone laughs nervously, and someone says ‘I can’t BELIEVE you all voted for me’ while absolutely knowing exactly why they all voted for them.

Most Likely To: Family Holiday Edition gives each guest a card with twelve festive prompts like ‘Most likely to cry at a Christmas movie,’ ‘Most likely to eat the last mince pie,’ ‘Most likely to still be wrapping presents at 1 a.m.,’ and ‘Most likely to give a truly unhinged gift.’

Players write a different family member’s name on each line — and yes, they can vote for themselves.

Print one card per guest. Each prompt has a visible blank line next to it for writing a name.

After five minutes of filling out cards, the host reads each prompt aloud and asks people to call out their answers simultaneously — on the count of three, everyone shouts the name they wrote.

The person who gets the most votes for each prompt stands up, takes a bow, and accepts their title. If it’s a tie, both people stand and the group votes with applause for who really deserves the crown.

This printable works beautifully for any size group, from six to sixty.

The reason Most Likely To works at a family Christmas party in a way it wouldn’t at a corporate event is that everyone in the room actually knows each other — which means the votes are specific, pointed, and hilariously accurate.

If you’re looking for a great gift idea for the woman in your life who organizes every Christmas party detail, vote her ‘Most Likely to Have a Color-Coded Wrapping Station’ and watch her glow.

The game doubles as the world’s most efficient way to figure out who does what in your family — lovingly, of course.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best funny Christmas games for large family groups?

For large groups (15+ players), the best options are Reverse Christmas Charades (everyone acts at once), Left Right Christmas Gift Pass (everyone participates simultaneously in a circle), Awkward Family Christmas Bingo (everyone plays on their own card throughout the event), and Jingle in the Bells Shake Off (played one at a time with the crowd watching and cheering).

These all scale well regardless of group size and keep everyone engaged at the same time.

Which games on this list are best for mixed ages — kids and grandparents together?

Almost every game here was designed with mixed ages in mind, but the absolute best for mixed-age groups are the Santa Beard Cotton Ball Race (no skill gap between ages), Christmas Heads Up (easy for kids to give clues, adults love guessing), Left Right Christmas Gift Pass (everyone does the same thing at the same pace), and the printable games like Christmas Mad Libs and Finish the Christmas Lyric, which can be played collaboratively with younger children teaming up with older family members.

Do I need to buy anything special for these Christmas party games?

Most games on this list need very little. For active games, you might need cotton balls and petroleum jelly (Santa Beard Race), pantyhose and ornament balls (Reindeer Nose), jingle bells and a tissue box (Jingle in the Bells), or ribbon and blindfolds (Bow Making Race).

All the printable games just need a printer and pens. The quiet games — Worst Gift Ever Contest, Funniest Family Christmas Memory Vote, and Most Likely To — need literally nothing except people and a pen or two.

How do I keep Christmas party games clean and appropriate for all ages?

Every game on this list is designed to be family-friendly and completely clean.

The comedy comes from physical silliness (pantyhose on your head, shaking jingle bells out of a box), relatable family scenarios (Awkward Family Bingo, Worst Gift Ever), and the absurdity of familiar things done slightly wrong (Mad Libs, Bad Acting Contest).

There’s nothing that would make grandparents wince or kids confused. When writing your own prompts for games like Charades or Bad Acting, just stick to Christmas movies, songs, and traditions and you’re golden.

How many games should I plan for a 3-hour Christmas party?

For a three-hour party, plan four to six games. Start with something low-key that works while people are arriving — Awkward Family Christmas Bingo running in the background, or Christmas Would You Rather as a warm-up.

Move into active games mid-party when energy is highest (Jingle in the Bells, Reindeer Nose, Reverse Charades). Finish with quieter, storytelling-style games like Worst Gift Ever Contest or Funniest Family Christmas Memory Vote after dinner when everyone is settled.

Always have one or two backup games in your pocket in case the group wants to keep going.

Can these Christmas games be played on Christmas Eve as well as at a party?

Absolutely — most of these games are perfect for Christmas Eve specifically. The Left Right Christmas Gift Pass is a classic Christmas Eve tradition. Christmas Movie Bad Acting Contest is ideal for a cosy evening in.

The quiet games (Worst Gift Ever, Funniest Memory Vote, Most Likely To) are perfect around the fireplace after Christmas Eve dinner. And honestly, Jingle in the Bells is even funnier when played in pajamas on Christmas Eve, which I highly recommend.

There you have it — 20 genuinely funny Christmas games for the whole family, from the completely chaotic (pantyhose on your head, jingle bells on your backside) to the surprisingly heartwarming (family memory votes, Most Likely To).

Mix and match based on your crowd, print the sheets that speak to you, and don’t forget that the best party games are the ones where nobody’s keeping track of the score because everyone’s laughing too hard.

Pin this list, bookmark it, screenshot it — whatever gets it to your phone at 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve when you realize you need a plan.

And if you’re still hunting for the perfect presents to use as game prizes, this Christmas gift guide for him and the full 2025 Christmas Gift Guide have you completely covered. Merry Christmas, and may your family be festively, ridiculously, perfectly chaotic.

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