Christmas Party Games
Games for a room full of relatives, varying ages and one very large lunch. Nothing to print, nothing to buy, and nobody has to stand up.
What to play on Christmas Day
In the order they tend to work — the early ones need no energy, the later ones need a room that has woken up.
1. Would You RatherFamily questions
2+ players10–30 minOne phone
The one to open with, because it asks nothing of anybody. Nobody has to remember a rule, stand up, or reveal anything, and a seven-year-old can answer the same question as their grandfather and both have an opinion worth hearing. The family bank is written clean and silly on purpose — no work references, nothing that needs explaining to a child.
2. Most Likely ToFamily questions
4–20 players10–20 minOne phone
Best played once everyone has been in the same room for a couple of hours. It runs entirely on shared history, which is the one thing a family has more of than any other group — the answers are funny precisely because everyone already knows who leaves the washing-up.
3–10 players20–40 minOne phone
The one that holds a room for a proper stretch, and the best fit for the flat hour after lunch when people want something to do but not something energetic. Everyone writes a fake answer to a real trivia question and tries to fool the rest. Caps at ten players, so with a bigger family run it in two rooms.
4. Never Have I EverFamily questions
3–15 players15–30 minOne phone
Worth a place, with one caution: pick the family bank deliberately rather than letting it draw from everything. It is written for mixed ages and stays on school, siblings and dropped biscuits. Agree before you start that anyone can pass without explaining.
5. This or ThatFamily questions
2+ players5–15 minOne phone
The filler. Five minutes long, needs no setup and no attention span, and it is the right thing when you want something between two bigger games or while people are still finding chairs.
Not a party game, but the thing most Christmas gatherings actually need first. Draw names from one shared link, set a budget, and let people add a wishlist — the organiser deliberately cannot see who has who, so you can play too.
Keep it open in a tab for the arguments that have no answer: who carves, who goes first, which film, who has to walk the dog in the dark. It settles things that would otherwise take fifteen minutes.
What actually works on Christmas Day
Christmas is an unusual set of constraints for a party game and most game lists ignore all of them. The group is not a group of friends — it spans sixty years of age, some of whom see each other once a year. People have eaten enormously and do not want to move. There is often a television on. And somebody has been cooking since seven in the morning and is not in the mood to run an activity.
That rules out more than it sounds. Anything needing printing, props, teams, a scoreboard or a rules explanation longer than two sentences will not survive contact with the room. What works is a game one person can start by reading a question out loud, that anyone can join three questions late without having missed anything, and that stops the moment the group loses interest without feeling abandoned.
Games for the table, before anyone moves
The best window is the twenty minutes when plates have been pushed away but nobody has got up yet. Everyone is already sitting in a circle facing each other, which is the arrangement every other game spends five minutes trying to create. Use it.
Would You Rather is the right opener here because it needs no rules and no equipment beyond one person's phone. Read the question, everyone answers on three, then make people justify themselves — the justification is the game. This or That does the same job faster if the table is restless.
The mixed-age problem, and how to get round it
The genuine difficulty at Christmas is that a game good for the children is boring for the adults, and a game good for the adults excludes the children. Most families solve this by splitting the room, which works but means the day never has everyone in it at once.
There is a better trick, and it is worth knowing: choose games where the questions are simple but the answers are revealing. A child can answer "would you rather be invisible or be able to fly" perfectly well. An adult answering the same question in front of their family is doing something more interesting, and the child gets to hear it. The question does not have to be sophisticated for the conversation to be.
What does not work is the reverse — a sophisticated question simplified for children present. Everyone can tell, and it makes the youngest person in the room feel like a constraint rather than a player.
If you have a big extended family
Above about twelve people, turn-taking stops working. A game where everyone answers in sequence takes twelve times as long per round as it does with one person, and the people at the end of the rotation lose interest before their turn arrives. This is the single most common reason a Christmas game dies.
Two fixes. Either split into two rooms and run the same game in both, which is what the Team Generator is for and takes about ten seconds. Or pick a game where everyone acts at the same time rather than in turn — Most Likely To has the whole room point simultaneously, so a group of twenty takes exactly as long per question as a group of five.
| When | What to play | Why then |
|---|---|---|
| Before the meal | This or That | Five minutes, no commitment, survives being interrupted by the oven |
| At the table, plates pushed back | Would You Rather | Everyone is already sitting in a circle and facing each other |
| The flat hour after lunch | Fake News Factory | Long enough to fill the gap, needs no energy, everyone stays seated |
| Late afternoon, room woken up | Most Likely To | Runs on shared history and gets funnier the longer the day goes on |
| Any point, for an argument | Spin the Wheel | Settles who carves, who chooses the film, who walks the dog |
Running the gift exchange
If your family has reached the size where buying for everyone has become absurd, a Secret Santa fixes it — one gift each instead of eleven. Draw names about three to four weeks ahead so people have time to think and post things, and agree the budget before the draw rather than after. Once people know who they are buying for, the budget quietly becomes a negotiation about that specific person, which is how you end up with a £10 gift sitting next to a £60 one.
What to skip
- Anything needing a printer. It is Christmas Day; the printer is out of cyan and nobody is going to the shop.
- Anything with a long rules explanation. If it takes more than two sentences, half the room will have started a different conversation by the time you finish.
- Anything requiring physical movement from people who have just eaten. Charades is a great game and the wrong game at three o'clock.
- Anything where losing is public and repeated. Once a year, with relatives, is not the moment to introduce a game that singles out the same person eight times.
Common questions
- What are the best Christmas party games for a mixed-age family?
- Would You Rather with the family question bank is the most reliable, because the same question genuinely works for a child and an adult. Most Likely To is the funniest once everyone has been in the room a while, since it runs on shared family history. Both are playable from one phone with no setup.
- What can we play with no equipment at all?
- Everything recommended here needs one phone and nothing else — no printing, no props, no pen and paper. One person reads from the screen and the rest of the room plays.
- How do you keep games going with a big family?
- Avoid games where people take turns in sequence — with fifteen people that means fourteen rounds of waiting. Pick games where everyone answers simultaneously, like Most Likely To, or split into two groups with the Team Generator and run the same game in both rooms.
- What is a good Christmas game for after dinner?
- Fake News Factory fits the post-lunch hour better than anything else here: everyone stays seated, it needs no energy, and it runs long enough to fill the gap rather than ending after five minutes. It caps at ten players, so split a bigger family into two games.
- Are these suitable for children?
- The family question banks are written for mixed ages and contain nothing that needs explaining to a child. Select the family category deliberately rather than leaving every category switched on, which would mix in questions written for adults.
- When should we draw names for Secret Santa?
- Three to four weeks before the exchange. Earlier and people forget; later and you have forced everyone into panic-buying. Add another week if gifts need posting, and two if anything is going internationally.