Choosing the right games at family events are always cause for strife. Everybody knows the usual Uno, Scrabble and Cards Against Humanity. We play them every year because no one wants to sit there pretending to listen to the rules every year.
However, they can also serve as a great icebreaker in the room and helps to cut out small talk at parties or events. Especially if you’re bringing along a new romantic partner to meet the family and desperately want to avoid an interrogation.
If you’re looking to mix up your holiday games rotation and bring the family together, here are some great games to play that are quick and easy to dive right into with a group.
Card Games
Card games are great options for including a large group of people at any event. Everyone also has a stray deck in their house that’s only been opened once, and then stashed away each year as we convince ourselves it’ll be useful to have one day. Well the day has finally arrived!
With just a simple deck, you can bring life with games like Solitaire, Poker, Mahjong and Cheat, you’ll be able to host plenty of cute, quick and easy to learn games for people to sit in on for a bit this Christmas.
Stealing Santa
There’s always an ever-optimistic aunty Carol in attendance who can’t wait to tell stories of the winning ticket she handed out that one time, and opts for a wad of Instant Scratch-Its. If you’re lucky, these make for great extra Christmas cash for those Boxing Day sales and can be the centrepiece for a good ole fashioned game of Stealing Santa.
The rules are simple: each person is given a secret number based on how many people there are prior to scratching to see if you win. Maybe you won nothing, maybe you won the lot. Based on your secret number you can choose to go around and steal another person’s Instant Scratch-Its and you might be able to pocket some winnings (if you remember to go to the news agency on the 27th).
Disclaimer: See the back of the ticket for prize details. The chance for winning a top prize on the $1 Christmas Gift ticket is 1 in 1,180,000.
Minute To Win It Challenges
These can be fun quick event roulette games to play with the family to kill time before serving food, while also emptying out your pantry of stuff that’s close to an expiry date.
Some fun minute to win it game ideas can be: Eat a bowl of marshmallows in a minute or scull a bottle of fizzy drink. But you don’t have to just be limited to food eating contests.
Face the Cookie is a great one where someone has to grab a cookie placed on their forehead, but they can only use their face muscles to get it into their mouth. Or Candy Cane Catch – just tie two pieces of twine between two chairs that players must try to throw candy canes onto. Whoever gets the most wins!
There are tonnes of fun Christmas themed ‘minute to win it’ challenges you can play, that also won’t make a huge mess of your house while everyone is over. These types of games are also really great in getting everyone to interact with each other in a large group if a lot of people are just meeting for the first time.
Charades
Charades is a great quiz game to play with your family as you get to flex your intimate knowledge of pop culture.
If you’re one of the last few people on Earth that don’t know how to play charades, here are the rules:
Teams are divided into two equal sizes. You’ll also need to select a neutral timekeeper (who will also keep score).
Each team will fill out blank slips of paper with phrases, books, songs, shows, celebrities or pop culture moments and place them into a hat. The other team will take their opponents hat and read out their suggestions.
Just make sure it’s people your family will actually know or are mostly unproblematic. No one wants Uncle Jason to pull out their Jeff Dunham impressions this Christmas.
Learn A Tiktok Dance In A Time Limit
There’s no greater moment at any holiday event then scaring your older relatives with the internet – and what better way to do that then by showing them what’s trending on Tiktok?
For this game, teams will have to learn and practice a Tiktok dance in a short amount of time and then present in from of everyone at the end. Whoever can pull it off the best wins.
It’s also a great way to figure out who are the Addison Raes and the Charli D’Amelios of your family if they haven’t revealed themselves just yet already.
And there you have it, five perfect games to play with the family this holiday season that’ll make you look like the most creative and fun relative of them all.
If you don’t have the energy to play games with your family members, just pull an instant Santa & chuck a coupla Instant Scratch-Its in their stockings.
