9 Printable Fun Christmas Games to Play with Your Kids

Family Christmas games are always fun and even more important this year. As families gather together to celebrate the holidays, what better way to spread Christmas joy than with fun, silliness, and laughter? These kid-friendly Christmas games are sure to deliver hours of entertainment, creating a lifetime of lasting memories.

Family Christmas Games

With so many great choices of Christmas games out there, how do you choose? One way to help with your decision-making is to choose Christmas games that come with downloadable printables to make your life easier! Here are 9 all-time favorites – all great ideas sure to elicit peels of laughter from kids and adults alike!

Holiday Charades

Holiday Charades is a fun Christmas game to play with friends and family, and you play by choosing from 16 prompts on the list and acting it out without speaking. The Charades topic list ranges from opening Christmas presents to building a snowman, and even The Grinch! The game’s goal is to break up into teams and try and guess your teammates’ charade correctly. If guessed correctly, you get the card, and whichever team has the most cards at the end wins!

Each team will be timed when acting out their card, so you will need a timing device to keep track. If the team cannot guess the charade before the time expires, then that card is discarded. Remember, this is charades, so it is a miming game. No forms of communication other than silent acting are allowed. Download the Holiday Charades Game Template here, courtesy of Apartment Guide.

Gingerbread House Building Contest

The Gingerbread House Building Contest consists of structures that may be houses, barns, or any other imaginative creation. The main gingerbread structure itself must be constructed mainly of gingerbread and icing. All entries must be made from scratch; no gingerbread kits from the store are permitted.

In the edible components section, all of the display components except for the base must consist of edible materials such as candy, cookies, crackers, and any other food item that doesn’t include a wrapper or stick.

Christmas Mayhem

Christmas Mayhem is an extremely skillful game in which the person acting out the scene can be really creative in acting out their subject material. When you first get your Christmas Mayhem sheet, you will need to cut each phrase out along the dotted lines and separate it into both red and green stacks.

The red cards describe who it is, and the green cards will give you a brief description. Once both red and green stacks are shuffled, the player will pull one card from each stack. This game’s goal is to be as creative and clever as possible due to some of the cards’ combinations being difficult to act out. Often people will require assistance from another play to help act out a two-person scene.

A great aspect of this game is the rules are pretty fluid. You can play in teams and keep the cards as points, or you can play every person for themselves, and the first person to guess correctly from the audience wins the cards. This game is built for tons of laughs with friends and family, which everyone needs more during this holiday season. Download the Christmas Mayhem Game here, courtesy of Apartment Guide.

Christmas Movie Bingo

Christmas Movie Bingo is a great way to spend the holidays watching Christmas movies with the family, but with an added twist. Each player will be presented with a Christmas Bingo Board that will list many different Christmas related items. During the Christmas-related movie that you are watching, when there is a mention or action that depicts one of the board’s subjects, you can mark it! The first person to complete an entire row wins! Download your Christmas Movie Bingo gameboard here.

Christmas Heads Up

Christmas Heads Up takes a fun simplified twist on the original heads-up game. The rules are pretty easy in that all of the subjects in the game are related to Christmas. It will start with a person drawing a card facedown so as not to look at it. Without looking, they will flip the card up and place it on their head. They can’t see it, but the other players can.

Usually, this game is broken up into two-person teams so that the person trying to guess the correct answer can focus on just the one person acting out the subject. Once the timer starts, the actor will have a set amount of time to act out as many subjects with correct or incorrect guesses as possible before the time runs out. The guesser or actor has the option of passing on a subject if they have trouble getting the correct answer.

Once all of the players have gone a set amount of turns, you will count up the cards that each team has collected and declare a winner! Download the Christmas Heads-Up Game here, courtesy of Apartment Guide.

White Elephant Gift Exchange

There are many ways to play the White Elephant Gift Exchange, but the most fun is with silly gifts. Every person that is playing the game must bring a gift. Once all of the wrapped gifts are placed in the middle, each participant will draw a number. Each person starting from the number will have a choice to open a gift or steal someone else’s.

If a particular item is stolen more than 3 times, it is locked and can no longer be stolen. If the number 1 is drawn, that means that person not only gets to go first but will also get to go last if they decide they want a new gift or steal someone else’s at the end of the game. Playing White Elephant Gift Exchange with silly gifts calls for many more laughs because it’s not about the gift but the people you spend time with.

Plastic Wrap Gift Game

Also known as the “Saran Wrap Ball Game,” it is a great game that can be played with all ages! The game involves wrapping fun prizes inside many layers of saran wrap. The prizes are revealed as the different layers are unwrapped. To make the game the most fun, it is recommended to wrap the best prizes in the middle to make a grand finale for the game. You will need many rolls of saran wrap to complete the ball.

Guess the Smell

Guess The Smell is probably the simplest game on this list and only consists of a Santa Hat, a jar with a lid, and random items you want to put in the jar. The jar goes from player to player, with each player wearing the Santa hat to block their vision completely. They remove the lid that has been sealed (to contain the smell to the highest potency) and guess based on smell alone. If you’re going with a strategic plan, then finding items that give off very little smell will make this game a little harder for teens and adults. But if you want to bring out the game’s full potential, then finding the smelliest items possible is what creates the most entertaining games.

Oven Mitt Unwrap Game

Otherwise known as the “Merry Christmitts Game,” the Oven Mitt Unwrap Game is made up of two oven mitts, one die for rolling purposes, a pie or plate tin, and an unbreakable gift that is wrapped to avoid breaking.

Starting with everyone in a circle, the youngest player will need to pick a number between 1 and 6. This will be the number that all of the players will be trying to roll throughout the game.
Both the plate and die will be passed, and everyone will have to roll until they hit the chosen number.
Once the first person rolls the chosen number, they are given the oven mitts to put on and will have to start trying to open the Christmas present.
While the first person is trying to unwrap, everyone else is still trying to roll the number. As soon as the next person rolls their number, they get the present and mitts and take over unwrapping.
This goes on until someone fully unwraps the present, which makes them the winner.

These 9 games to play at Christmas are sure to bring the family and friends together for fun times and endless laughs. If you’re celebrating a socially distanced Christmas and want to send fun cards to loved ones, check out my post on charming printable postcards while you’re here. Merry Christmas!

AUTHOR BIO:

Michaela Wong is a content creator and graduate of San Diego State University. She writes for a variety of clients ranging from career development to interior design.

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