Quick answer: 30 Christmas party games, sorted by the kind of party you are throwing: quiz games, no-prep games for the sofa, word and drawing games, gift games, office party games and games that work on Zoom. Each one comes with what you need, how many can play and why it works. At the end you get 15 Christmas would you rather questions, 15 this or that questions and 15 icebreaker questions, ready to read aloud.
The best Christmas party game is one you can explain in a single sentence while someone is still taking their coat off. Most of the games below pass that test. A few need ten minutes of preparation, and they say so.
Pick three or four, not ten. A good evening needs one game that people can join late, one that gets loud, and one quiet one for when the food arrives. Mix those and the party runs itself.
Fast picks: For a family table after dinner, start with the Christmas Quiz Round (1) and Yes and No (7). For adults with a drink in hand, Most Likely To (9) and Corporate Carols (19). For an office party where half the room has never spoken, Human Bingo (23) and the icebreaker questions at the end. On a video call, the Sixty-Second Scavenger Hunt (28).
Quiz games
A quiz is a party game with a scoreboard. It works for any age as long as the teams are mixed, and it gives quiet guests a way to shine without having to perform anything.
1. The Christmas Quiz Round
You need: a list of questions, paper and pens. Players: 4 to 40, in teams of 3 to 6.
How to play: Read ten questions, each one twice. Teams write down their answers, then swap sheets with the team next to them and mark while you read out the answers. Three rounds of ten fill about forty minutes. Our 100 Christmas trivia questions come in seven rounds from easy to hard, so you can match the level to your crowd. If you would rather not read aloud, the interactive quiz on our Christmas page runs on any phone.
Why it works: Swapping sheets means nobody marks their own team, and the answers are where the arguments start. Those arguments are the part people remember.
2. Hum That Carol
You need: slips of paper with Christmas song titles. Players: 4 or more, in two teams.
How to play: One player draws a slip and hums the song with their mouth closed. No words, no la-la-la. Their team has thirty seconds to name it, then the other team takes a turn. Songs everyone knows by the chorus, like Jingle Bells or Last Christmas, are the warm-up. Carols like Good King Wenceslas or O Little Town of Bethlehem are where it gets hard.
Why it works: Hummed through the nose, half of all Christmas songs sound identical. That is the joke, and it lands every single round.
3. Plot, Badly Explained
You need: nothing. Players: 3 or more.
How to play: Describe a Christmas film as unhelpfully as possible without lying. "A child is abandoned by his family and responds with violence" is Home Alone. "A man visits his wife's office party and it goes badly" is Die Hard. "A green man steals a whole town's belongings and then gives them back" is The Grinch. First to guess scores a point and describes the next film.
Why it works: Writing the clue is as much fun as guessing it, so nobody is ever just waiting. When you run out of films, the Christmas movie trivia post has plenty more.
4. Closest Wins
You need: questions with a number for an answer, paper and pens. Players: any number.
How to play: Ask questions nobody knows exactly. How many gifts are given across all twelve verses of The Twelve Days of Christmas? (364.) In which year was Jingle Bells first published? (1857.) How many copies has White Christmas sold, by Guinness World Records' estimate? (About 50 million.) Everyone writes down a number. The closest guess scores a point, an exact answer scores three.
Why it works: Nobody is ever completely wrong, so nobody sits out. It also makes a clean tiebreaker at the end of a quiz.
5. Riddle Relay
You need: a list of Christmas riddles. Players: two teams of any size.
How to play: Read a riddle to one team. They get one minute to answer. If they miss, the other team gets a single guess to steal the point. Our Christmas riddles range from ones a seven-year-old solves instantly to ones that start family feuds.
Why it works: The steal rule keeps both teams listening, even when it is not their turn.
6. Fact or Fiction
You need: a mix of true and invented Christmas facts. Players: any number.
How to play: Read out a statement. Everyone votes at the same moment: thumbs up for true, thumbs down for invented. Two true ones to get you started: plum pudding contains no plums, and the first song ever played in space was Jingle Bells. Take real ones from our Christmas facts and write a few convincing fakes of your own.
Why it works: The real Christmas facts sound made up, which makes the fake ones strangely believable. Simultaneous voting stops people copying the smartest person in the room.
No-prep games
For the moment after dinner when everyone is too full to stand up and nobody wants to fetch a board game.
7. Yes and No, the Dickens Way
You need: nothing. Players: 4 to 15.
How to play: One person thinks of something. Everyone else asks questions that can only be answered yes or no, until someone guesses it. The house rule that makes it Christmassy: the answer has to be someone or something in the room, the dog and the host included.
Why it works: It needs nothing, which is why it has lasted. In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge watches his nephew Fred's party play exactly this game. After clues like a disagreeable animal that growls and grunts and lives in London, the answer turns out to be Uncle Scrooge himself. Scrooge, invisible, begs the ghost for one more half-hour so he can keep watching.
8. Christmas A to Z
You need: nothing. Players: 3 to 12.
How to play: Go around the circle. Each person names something Christmassy that starts with the next letter of the alphabet: angel, bauble, carol, and so on. Anyone who takes longer than five seconds is out. Agree on the hard letters before you start. Xmas should count: the X is the Greek letter chi, the first letter of Christ in Greek.
Why it works: It starts easy and gets tense fast. By Q, the whole room is shouting suggestions at whoever is stuck.
9. Most Likely To
You need: nothing. Players: 5 to 20 adults.
How to play: Read a prompt that starts with "Who is most likely to..." and on the count of three, everyone points at someone. Whoever collects the most fingers has to explain themselves. Prompts that work: open a present early and rewrap it; regift something to the person who gave it to them; still have the tree up in February; do all their shopping on 24 December; start the Die Hard argument; cry at a supermarket Christmas advert.
Why it works: It is honest, a little rude and over in seconds. One rule keeps it friendly: only read prompts you would be happy to be pointed at yourself.
10. Two Truths and a Christmas Lie
You need: nothing. Players: 4 to 12.
How to play: Each player tells three short Christmas stories from their own life. Two are true, one is invented. The group votes on the lie, then the storyteller reveals it.
Why it works: You learn more about people in ten minutes than in ten years of small talk. The true stories are usually stranger than the lies.
11. The Worst Gift Ever
You need: nothing, or one terrible prize. Players: 4 to 20.
How to play: Everyone tells the story of the worst Christmas present they have ever received, in under a minute. The group votes for the winner, who gets a prize. Ideally, a bad one.
Why it works: Everyone has an answer, nobody needs to be clever, and the best stories always involve a relative. It works just as well at an office party as at home.
12. One Word at a Time
You need: nothing. Players: 4 to 10.
How to play: Tell a Christmas story around the circle, one word per person. Start it off with "On Christmas Eve, the reindeer..." and see where it ends up. Anyone who pauses too long, or tries to steer the story, starts the next one.
Why it works: No single person controls the plot, so it goes off the rails within three sentences. That is the fun.
13. Don't Say Christmas
You need: one clothes peg per guest. Players: 6 to 50.
How to play: Clip a peg to every guest as they arrive. For the rest of the evening, the word Christmas is banned. Anyone who hears you say it can take your peg and clip it to their own clothes. Whoever wears the most pegs at the end wins. For a harder version, ban Santa as well.
Why it works: It runs in the background all night and needs no attention from the host. Almost no preparation, and the traps people set for each other become the conversation.
Word and drawing games
These need pens and paper, and they reward the guests who are funny rather than the ones who know things.
14. Christmas Charades
You need: slips of paper with Christmas films, songs and books. Players: 6 or more, in two teams.
How to play: One player draws a slip and acts it out without speaking, while their team guesses. The usual signals apply: fingers for the number of words, a tug on the earlobe for "sounds like". Two minutes per turn. Good titles to include: It's a Wonderful Life, Jingle Bell Rock, The Nutcracker, Frosty the Snowman.
Why it works: It is the old parlour game for a reason: adults act far worse than children, and watching them try is the entertainment.
15. The Plate on Your Head
You need: paper plates and pens. Players: any number.
How to play: Everyone holds a paper plate flat on top of their head and draws on its underside, without looking, while the host calls out instructions one at a time: draw a snowman, now give him a hat, now a tree next to him, now a star on the tree, now presents under it. Then everyone shows their plate and the room votes on the best one.
Why it works: Nobody can draw like this, so the talented artists have no advantage. The results are funny enough to keep on the fridge.
16. Forbidden Words
You need: cards with one Christmas word and five banned words each. Players: 4 or more, in two teams.
How to play: One player describes the word on the card to their team in sixty seconds, without saying any of the banned words. For reindeer, you cannot say Santa, sleigh, Rudolph, antlers or animal. For mistletoe: kiss, plant, hang, door, green. For stocking: sock, fireplace, hang, fill, presents.
Why it works: Describing Christmas without Christmas vocabulary is much harder than it sounds, and people panic in funny ways.
17. The Merry Christmas Word Hunt
You need: paper, pens and a timer. Players: any number.
How to play: Write MERRY CHRISTMAS where everyone can see it. Players have three minutes to write as many words as they can from those letters, using each letter only as many times as it appears. Then read the lists aloud. Any word that someone else also found is crossed out. Only unique words score.
Why it works: The quiet players tend to win this one, and the crossing-out rule rewards the strange words nobody else thought of.
18. Christmas Scattergories
You need: paper, pens and a list of categories. Players: 3 to 12.
How to play: Pick a random letter. Everyone has two minutes to fill in one answer per category, all starting with that letter. Categories that work: a Christmas film, something you hang on a tree, a gift under 20 dollars, a food you only eat in December, a reason to leave a party early, a famous person you would invite to Christmas dinner. Answers score only if nobody else wrote the same thing.
Why it works: The categories are the fun part. Swap in ones about your family or your office for extra laughs.
19. Corporate Carols
You need: paper and pens. Players: 4 or more.
How to play: Each player rewrites a Christmas song title in the dullest office language they can manage, and the others guess the original. Some examples to read out first: "Reindeer With Visible Nasal Condition Faces Workplace Exclusion" (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). "Request for Pale Seasonal Weather Outcome" (White Christmas). "Low-Volume Evening Event" (Silent Night). "Heads-Up: S. Claus Arriving On Site" (Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town). "Revised Wish List, Scope Reduced to One Item" (All I Want for Christmas Is You).
Why it works: Writing the clues is the game. It is especially good at office parties, where everyone is fluent in the language being mocked.
Gift games
20. White Elephant (also called Yankee Swap)
You need: one wrapped gift per player with a price limit, and numbered slips in a hat. Players: 6 to 30.
How to play: Everyone draws a number. Player one unwraps a gift from the pile. Every player after that can either unwrap a new gift or steal one that is already open. Anyone who loses their gift chooses again. Two rules stop it dragging on: a gift is frozen after its third steal, and you cannot steal straight back the gift that was just taken from you. At the very end, player one gets a single chance to swap.
Why it works: The stealing. People who have been polite all year suddenly fight over a scented candle. The name comes from a story that kings of Siam gave rare white elephants to courtiers they wanted to ruin, because the sacred animals were costly to keep and could not be given away. Historians say no Siamese king ever did this. The name stuck anyway.
21. The Right-Left Story
You need: one wrapped gift and a short story full of the words right and left. Players: 6 to 20, sitting in a circle.
How to play: The host reads a story aloud. Every time the word right comes up, the gift moves one place to the right. Every time the word left comes up, it moves to the left. Whoever holds it when the story ends keeps it. You can write your own story in five minutes; see the sample below.
Why it works: Everyone has to listen closely, the gift keeps changing hands, and the ending is a surprise even to the host.
A short right-left story to read aloud: On Christmas Eve, Mrs. Wright left the house to buy one last present. She turned right at the bakery, then left at the church, and found the shop right where she had left it. "Is this the right present?" she asked. The shopkeeper said it was the only one left. Mrs. Wright paid, turned left, then right, then left again, and got home right on time. She put the present under the tree, and the rest is up to whoever is holding it right now.
22. The Cracker Joke-Off
You need: Christmas crackers, or a printed list of bad jokes. Players: 4 to 20.
How to play: Everyone pulls their cracker, puts on the paper crown and reads their joke aloud with full conviction. The table votes for the worst joke. Its reader wins every plastic prize from every cracker on the table.
Why it works: A bad joke read solemnly by a grown adult in a paper crown is funnier than any good joke. The London confectioner Tom Smith is usually credited with inventing the cracker in 1847: it began as a sugared almond wrapped in paper with a motto inside, copied from French bonbons, and the bang was added later.
The one Christmas game not to revive: snapdragon. For centuries, English families played it on Christmas Eve. Raisins went into a shallow bowl, brandy went over the raisins, and the whole thing was set on fire. Players snatched the burning raisins out with their bare hands and ate them while they were still alight. Play Candy Cane Fishing instead.
Office Christmas party games
Office parties have their own problem: people who see each other every day but know almost nothing about each other, plus a manager in the room. The best office games are team-based, short and impossible to get wrong in an embarrassing way.
23. Human Bingo
You need: a printed bingo card for each guest, with sixteen squares. Players: 10 to 100.
How to play: Each square describes a person: has never seen Home Alone; has been to a Christmas market abroad; can name all of Santa's reindeer; has a birthday in December; has worked on Christmas Day; bakes their own Christmas cookies; has already bought every present. Guests mingle and find a different colleague for each square, who signs it. The first person with a full row shouts bingo.
Why it works: It gives people a reason, and a script, to talk to the colleagues they never talk to. Most people are relieved to have one.
24. Whose Christmas Photo?
You need: one childhood Christmas photo from each colleague, collected in advance. Players: 8 to 50.
How to play: One trusted person collects the photos, numbers them and shows them on a screen or pins them to a board. Everyone writes down who they think each child is. The reveal comes at the end, photo by photo.
Why it works: Nobody can prepare for it, and the photos do all the talking. The reveal of the manager in a reindeer jumper is always the highlight.
25. Candy Cane Fishing
You need: a box of candy canes and two bowls per team. Players: 4 or more, in teams.
How to play: Each player holds a candy cane in their mouth by the straight end. Without using their hands, they hook candy canes out of one bowl and drop them into the other. Sixty seconds per player, relay style. Most candy canes moved wins.
Why it works: It is impossible to look dignified doing it, which puts everyone on the same level, management included.
26. One-Hand Wrapping Race
You need: wrapping paper, tape, scissors and identical boxes. Players: pairs, any number.
How to play: Two people stand side by side. Each may use only their outside hand, so the pair has to work as one person with two hands. They race to wrap a box. A judge scores speed and neatness.
Why it works: It forces real teamwork in two minutes, and you quickly learn who takes charge and who follows.
27. Secret Santa Detective
You need: an ongoing Secret Santa exchange. Players: 6 to 40.
How to play: Before the big reveal, each person gets three yes-or-no questions to the room about their Secret Santa, then one guess. A correct guess wins a small prize. Givers must answer honestly but can keep their face as blank as they like.
Why it works: It turns a gift swap everyone already does into a second game, at no extra cost.
Games for Zoom and online Christmas parties
On a video call, the games that work are the ones that give people something to do with their hands or a reason to use the chat.
28. Sixty-Second Scavenger Hunt
You need: a camera. Players: 4 to 30.
How to play: The host calls out one item at a time, and everyone has sixty seconds to fetch it and hold it up to the camera. Items that work: something red; the oldest Christmas decoration in your home; something that smells like Christmas; the worst present you still own; a mug with a story behind it. The last person back loses the round.
Why it works: It gets people off their chairs and shows a little of their homes, which is the one thing a video call does better than an office.
29. Close-Up
You need: a few extreme close-up photos of Christmas objects. Players: any number.
How to play: The host shares a photo zoomed in so far that it is barely recognisable: a bauble, a strand of tinsel, the crust of a mince pie, the seam of a stocking. Then they zoom out step by step. The first person to type the right answer in the chat wins the point.
Why it works: It runs in the chat, so quiet colleagues play as hard as loud ones.
30. The Christmas Jumper Catwalk
You need: everyone's worst Christmas jumper. Players: 4 to 40.
How to play: Each person gets twenty seconds to present their jumper like a fashion model, with a short story about where it came from. The group votes in three categories: ugliest, most homemade and best story.
Why it works: Three categories mean three winners, and the story vote rewards the people who put effort into the backstory.
Christmas would you rather questions
Play these as a game: read one out, and everyone walks to the left or right side of the room to pick their answer. One person from each side then gets twenty seconds to defend it. At a table, a show of hands works too.
- Would you rather open all your presents on Christmas Eve, or wait until Christmas afternoon?
- Would you rather hear only one Christmas song for the rest of your life, or never hear a Christmas song again?
- Would you rather spend Christmas on a beach, or snowed in at a cabin with no Wi-Fi?
- Would you rather be one of Santa's elves, or one of his reindeer?
- Would you rather get socks every Christmas for the rest of your life, or a mystery present that is either wonderful or terrible?
- Would you rather wrap every present in the house, or cook the whole Christmas dinner alone?
- Would you rather have Christmas every month, or only once every four years?
- Would you rather star in a cheesy Christmas romance, or a Christmas horror film?
- Would you rather be stuck in a lift with a carol choir, or with a mime dressed as Santa?
- Would you rather have your family read your December search history, or your December text messages?
- Would you rather have a tree that drops every needle on Boxing Day, or one that never drops a needle but smells of nothing?
- Would you rather keep a real reindeer as a pet, or have a snowman that never melts?
- Would you rather give a speech at the office party, or sing karaoke at it?
- Would you rather know what every present is before you open it, or never find out who sent any of them?
- Would you rather eat Christmas dinner for every meal in December, or skip it completely this year?
Christmas this or that questions
The rapid version. Read the two options, everyone answers at the same moment, no explanations allowed. Fifteen in a row takes about two minutes and tells you a surprising amount about the room.
- Real tree or artificial tree?
- Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?
- Home Alone or Elf?
- Mulled wine or eggnog?
- Wrapping paper or gift bags?
- Mariah Carey or Wham!?
- Snow or sunshine?
- Coloured lights or white lights?
- Turkey or ham?
- Presents in pyjamas or fully dressed?
- Giving gifts or getting gifts?
- Christmas cookies or mince pies?
- Carols or pop songs?
- Santa or the Grinch?
- Decorate in November or wait until December?
Christmas icebreaker questions
For tables where people do not know each other well. They are better than "any plans for the holidays?" because each one has a concrete answer and usually a story behind it. For the rest of the year, there are more conversation starters that aren't boring.
- What is the best present you have ever given someone?
- Which of your family's Christmas traditions would an outsider find strange?
- What did you want most for Christmas when you were eight?
- Which Christmas film do you watch every single year?
- Which Christmas food do you secretly dislike?
- Where is the most unusual place you have spent Christmas?
- How did you find out the truth about Santa?
- What is the worst job you have ever had over the holidays?
- If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to Christmas dinner, who would it be?
- What is your oldest Christmas decoration, and where did it come from?
- Which Christmas song would you happily ban forever?
- What has to happen before it finally feels like Christmas to you?
- What is your personal record for last-minute present shopping?
- Which Christmas tradition from another country would you adopt?
- What was the best thing that happened to you this year?
How to run a Christmas game night that works
Start with a game people can join late, like Don't Say Christmas or Human Bingo, so nobody arrives in the middle of rules they missed. Put the loud game in the middle of the evening, when energy is highest, and finish with something quieter while dessert goes around. Mix ages and departments in every team. Stop each game while people are still enjoying it, not when they are done with it. And keep the prizes cheap and silly: a chocolate orange causes more joy than a gift card.
If you are planning a quiz, a mix of rounds keeps everyone involved; pub quiz rounds explained shows how the professionals build one, and the pub quiz and trivia questions by category pages have questions for every other month of the year. And if the quiz ends in an argument about who put the first electric lights on a Christmas tree, NerdSip can turn that question into a five-minute course with a quiz at the end, so you win next year.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are good Christmas party games for adults?
Games that reward being funny or honest rather than knowing things. Most Likely To, Two Truths and a Christmas Lie, The Worst Gift Ever and Corporate Carols all work well with adults, need little or no preparation and are over in a few minutes each. A Christmas quiz round in mixed teams is the reliable backbone of the evening.
What Christmas games need no preparation?
Yes and No (twenty questions where the answer is someone in the room), Christmas A to Z, Most Likely To, Two Truths and a Christmas Lie, The Worst Gift Ever and One Word at a Time all need nothing at all. Don't Say Christmas only needs a clothes peg per guest.
What are good games for an office Christmas party?
Team-based games that are short and hard to get embarrassingly wrong: Human Bingo to get people talking, Whose Christmas Photo? with childhood pictures, Candy Cane Fishing, a one-hand wrapping race in pairs, and a Christmas quiz in mixed teams. Most Likely To works too, as long as the prompts stay kind.
How does a White Elephant gift exchange work?
Everyone brings one wrapped gift under an agreed price and draws a number. In turn, each player either unwraps a new gift or steals an opened one; anyone robbed chooses again. A gift is frozen after its third steal, and at the end player one gets one final chance to swap. It is also called Yankee Swap.
What Christmas games work on Zoom or Teams?
Games that use the camera or the chat: a sixty-second scavenger hunt for Christmas objects at home, Close-Up with zoomed-in photos guessed in the chat, a Christmas jumper catwalk with a vote, and a quiz run by one host sharing their screen.
How many games do you need for a Christmas party?
Three or four for an evening. One that people can join late, one loud game for the middle of the party, and one quiet game for when the food comes out. Stop each game while people are still enjoying it.
Every NerdSip course clears a four-layer fact-checking pipeline before it reaches the app: grounded in live sources, scored nightly, gated on failure, and reviewable by a person at one tap. Articles on this blog are drafted with AI assistance, then researched, verified, and edited by our team.
Editorial responsibility: ai51 UG (haftungsbeschränkt). Responsible editor named in the imprint.
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