Annie O’Sullivan, Marisa LaScala |
Named That Scent
Nothing feels quite as cozy as when it’s time to break out the holiday candles with seasonal scents that smell like sugar cookies, evergreen trees and eggnog. Round up a bunch of your favorites with super unique names and scents and have a blind sniff test, where participants have to guess the scent of each candle. The quirkier the scent the harder it is to guess!
RELATED: Best Christmas Candles Ever
Wrap That Gifrt
Time to see who really has major wrapping skills. Your guests might be able to wrap presents that come in standard-sized boxes, but what about unusually shaped things, like a football or a lava lamp? Round up some odd-shaped items or buy some from the dollar store and see how well your guests can wrap the gift. Judge on individual wrapping skills or split into teams and make it a group event.
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Board Game Tournament
Have everyone bring their favorite board games and make it a giant tournament. Let everyone rotate around and play whatever they want or turn up the heat on the competition with a bracket system and have the participant pool narrowed down by winners of each round until it’s just one winner left standing
RELATED: Best Board Games to Play
Best Gift, Worst Gift Guessing Game
Everyone receives four slips of paper, and on them, participants write down two great Christmas gifts and two terrible ones. However, only one of each are things they’ve actually received. The other two are made up. Throw all the filled-out slips into a bowl, and take turns pulling them out and guessing which gifts are real and which are fake.
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Christmas Cookie Decorating
Cookie decorating might seem like a pretty basic activity, but there’s nothing wrong with a classic, especially since cookie decorating makes us feel nostalgic for celebrating the holidays when we were kids. Have participants all recreate the same design or let everyone do their own thing and have a panel of judges declare the winner.
RELATED: Best Christmas Cookie Recipes
Christmas Cocktail Competition
Who is the best bartender in the group? Time to find out. Have everyone bring ingredients for and be ready to make a holiday-themed cocktail (enough for all drinking participants to have at least one!) and have everyone vote on which is the best. Not only does the creator of the cocktail get bragging rights, but the hostess will be thankful for the drink contributions from the group. Want to make sure you win? Take some inspiration from one of our Christmas cocktail recipes at the link below.
RELATED: Easy Christmas Cocktails
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Blindfolded Christmas Crafting
Everyone has to complete an easy craft, like decorating a felt Christmas tree or ornament, blindfolded. All competitors only have five minutes to decorate, and then the group will judge which ones take 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. The winner gets first grabs when the Christmas cookies are put out for dessert.
RELATED: Festive Christmas Crafts to Make This Holiday Season
Name That Tune
When you’re stuffed from some delicious appetizers or a big Christmas meal and you want a game you can play while still lounging around, look no further than “Name That Tune.” All you need is someone with a phone who has all the great Christmas classics queued up and ready to be played. Have someone be the DJ, and see who can guess the festive songs first after only hearing a few notes.
RELATED: Best Christmas Songs of All Time
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How Many Layers?
Colder weather means a lot more layers, but ever wonder how many layers you can actually get on? Grab a bunch of clothes and accessories, preferably stretchy and of various sizes, and a stopwatch. Give players one minute, or a time frame of your choice, to see how many layers they can get on their body before time runs out. The person with the most wins!
The Santa Claus Hat Game
An accessory and a game all in one! At the start of the party, each player gets a Santa Claus hat to wear. One person is designated the “leader” and their job throughout the party is to take their hat off at one point. Once the leader takes off their hat, the goal is then for every other player to realize and take off their own hat before they’re the last one wearing the Santa Claus hat. Instead of being a winner, the last one wearing the hat loses!
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Ornament Guess
An easy and free game to play! When guests come through the door, have them guess how many ornaments are on your Christmas tree. At the end of the night, the person with the best guess wins a fun prize or gets to open the first present of the night.
RELATED: Gorgeous Ways to Elevate Your Christmas Tree This Year
Ugly Christmas Sweater Contest
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Holiday Movie Drinking Game
Who Am I?
Write up a stack of cards with characters from traditional Christmas movies and TV shows. Every guest must pick one (no peeking!) and attach it to an elastic headband. They then must spend the night asking other guests questions to try to figure out which character they currently have on their headband. The first one to figure theirs out wins!
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Never Have I Ever
Once the kids are tucked in bed, it’s time for the adults to have some fun. Make this classic game more holiday-themed by posing questions like, “Never have I ever regifted a gift” to see what things your friends and family are guilty of doing. You can play the traditional way by having anyone who has done the deed take a sip of their drink or simply use a point system and reward the winner with a gift.
The Caroling Challenge
This is an easy, no-setup game that you can play everywhere, from a home get-together to an office party. While everyone sits in a circle, one person starts by singing a line from a holiday song, and the person to the right has to sing the next line of this song, and so on, says Kaitlin Moss of The Every Hostess. Pick from the classics like “Jingle Bells” or try a more modern holiday hit like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” You might know the first few lines of all these songs, but it gets challenging really quickly!
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Minute to Win It Snowman Game
Set a timer for a minute, and see who can make the most “snowmen” by stacking mini marshmallows on top of each other. You need three to make a stack (but, no, they don’t need faces or arms). Too easy? Try making everyone use chopsticks. Use the leftovers in some cocoa.
Candy Canes
Here’s a throwback: Remember playing the card game Spoons, the one that sent everyone diving into the middle of the table to grab a spoon, and whoever was left without one was the loser? This is the same thing, only candy canes replace spoons. Bonus: You get to eat the candy canes when the game is over.
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“Favorite Things” Gift Exchange
A “Favorite Things” gift exchange is essentially a positive spin on a white elephant gift exchange, says Tara Berger, founder of One Stylish Party. Instead of a silly gag gift, each guest brings three, low-cost items they absolutely love. The gifts are placed on a table and everyone takes turns picking out three items to keep. “It is a great way to introduce your friends to some of your must-have items and it doesn’t require you to tailor the gift to a specific person.”
Gift Wrap Physical Challenge
Annie O’Sullivan (she/her) covers holiday, gift guide, travel, and lifestyle content at Good Housekeeping. She has a degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University and previously reported for Runner’s World, NBC New York/NY 4 and Woman’s Day. Annie also has experience writing entertainment news and celebrity-focused content.
Marisa (she/her) has covered all things parenting, from the postpartum period through the empty nest, for Good Housekeeping since 2018; she previously wrote about parents and families at Parents and Working Mother. She lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn, where she can be found dominating the audio round at her local bar trivia night or tweeting about movies.
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