Ideas/games for Large # of Family for Christmas

Hi V.-
First off, love the name!(it's my mom's lol). my mom is the queen of christmas games. she has done christmas word scramblers, christmas themed Pictionary, christmas themed Charades, guess the christmas song. and these all worked for kids & adults. everyone highly enjoyed all the games, plus she had prizes too(worth maybe $1-3 each). it was definitly a great way to involve everyone & have fun. so good luck & have a merry christmas & happy new year.

Hey V.!

Our family just loves Christmas...we have a large family also and we enjoy playing "Name that Christmas tune" Here's how it works. Everyone is given a piece of paper and asked to number their paper from 1 to __ (how many ever songs you want to do) and then someone is at the cd player and plays just a little of a song. The object is to write down the name of the song. It helps if you have a multiple cd player. At the end, the person with the most correct, wins! (Maybe a Christmas ornament) We like to play this with each family at my Grandmother's house. Each family--consisting of Dad, Mom and Kids works together as a team--it's great--it's also good for the little ones--that way they don't feel left out! It's fun and everyone laughs!

Another game that we like to play is the "Christmas Memories" This will take some time to do but, it isfun! The object is to get everyone thinking about their fav. Christmas memory and write it down. When all are finished, all the pieces of paper are placed in a jar and then the jar is passed around and each person reaches into the jar and pulls out a paper and reads it--then, you have to guess who wrote it...sometimes...an aunt or uncle will write something like: "The Year that my Cordorory pants caught on fire!" Well, you know that there's a story there...and it is fun to hear about our family...and it keeps kids away from the TV and off the computer!

Here's one for the younger kids...read The Night Before Christmas story and have the children listen for certain words...you will have to pick out the words and let them know ahead of time, and have an action with each word or phrase...for example..."Christmas" have the kids clap softly "old Saint Nick" have the kids hold their tummies and laugh like Santa would...you get the idea...it keeps them busy--the adults enjoy watching too--some even participate--you'll have to read through the story and come up with your own key words!

I hope that you have fun and that you get lots of ideas! Let me know how it turned out!

S.

Hi. My husband and I created a game last year at Christmas that worked really well. We had about 50 adults and children total. We made a game out of questions. We took each family member and made a question for them. Some questions we took care of two or more people. (Ex. Name the two family members who have the middle name Kate) We just made sure that each family member was covered and we only used each name once. It was really fun and it makes you learn things about family members if you didn't already know them. Of course the smaller children might not know the answers, but the older ones will have fun with it. Hope this helps! :)

Vicky,

I also come from a large family. We get together every year and play a few games...it's really fun!

One game, we seperated into two teams. One team tied red balloons around their ankle (you want to leave them a little loose), the other team tied green balloons to their ankles. The host didn't play this one, she sat out in order to time it. The teams had about 2 minutes to go at each other and try to pop the other's balloon. So, while you're trying to pop their balloon with your feet, you're trying to keep yours from getting busted. We had SO much fun with that!

We also played one where you take a few small items and put them in seperate boxes. We had about 40 people at ours, so there was probably about 10 boxes with a small item (like a votive candle or something) inside. My cousin read this story and everytime she said the words left or lefty/right or righty, you sent the box to the left or right of you. When the story ended, whoever got a box got to keep the small gift. You could always do that with different gifts if your family is small enough and make sure that everyone has one. If you want to do that game (It's also a lot of fun). If you're interested, let me know and I will get the story and email it to you.

This last one is my FAVORITE!! It's called "Dirty Santa". JUST HEAR ME OUT...it's not bad, lol. Everyone takes a gift (the limit we have is $15). You bring the gift either in a bag or wrapped. Everyone draws a number. The first person goes and picks a gift (any gift) and opens it. The second person can either "steal" the first person's gift or get a new one. If they "steal" the gift instead of drawing a new one, the first person goes to the table and gets another gift. The third person has the option to "steal" the first person's gift, or the second person's gift or pick a new one. A gift can only be stolen 3 times and then it is officially retired and can no longer be stolen. We have played this game for the past three years and have had SO much fun! Women usually bring Christmas decorations and men usually bring small tools or things that they like to trade around so the guys aren't stuck getting something feminine. The older kids play this with us, the smaller children are just given some small gifts to play with instead of playing this game.

I hope this is helpful. Like I said, if you need the story I was talking about, I will be glad to get it and email it to you. Just let me know.

GOOD LUCK!!! :)

In my family we play Bingo on Christmas. Everyone brings a few cheap gifts (lotion, gloves, etc) and when you Bingo, you can choose a gift from the pile. We sort the gifts by man, woman, boy, girl. That way you typically get a gift you can use. This works well for a family that wants to sit on the couch and not move or exert much energy. It also works for our range of ages 2-84.

My sister plays a different, but similar game at the kids birthday parties. She takes a deck of cards and passes them out until all of the cards are distributed as evenly as possible. She then takes a second deck of cards and shuffles them. As she draws a card off the top whoever has the matching card picks a gift. She only buys about five gifts for all 15 of us. We then get to pick either a new gift or a gift that someone else has already opened. It can become a little rowdy, but it is all about luck.

Hope these help. Our family usually has a good time.

I also have a LARGE family and every year we play a game called "rob your neighbor". Every person buys a cheap gift and wraps it(in my family we do gag gifts), nothing over $5. (No one can know what another person has as it makes it more interesting). You will have to have 2 dice per 4 people (so if you have say 9 people playing you would have 4 dice, 12 you would have 6 dice, 18 you would have 8 dice, etc).

Everyone puts their gifts in the center of the table and the dice are spaced out equally. The dice are rolled, and every time a double is hit that person takes a gift from the center of the table, and passes the dice to their left. The game continues like this until all gifts are gone from the center of the table. The next step is the fun step...

After all the gifts are taken out of the center of the table, set a timer for 5 - 10 minutes, and continue the game, but this time when doubles are rolled the person that rolled the doubles gets to "steal" someone else's gift. When the timer goes off the game stops. The gifts are then opened to see what is in them. In my family, if someone does not have a gift when the timer goes off, then someone that has 2 has to give up one of theirs.

This game can get pretty "rough" if your family is anything like mine. For younger kids you can do a different version (just make up your own - pulling numbers, names, etc).

Hope this helps, and have a wonderful Christmas!!!

Hi V.!

You are a brave soul for having everyone at your house for Christmas. I would do the following things, I've always tried to get my mom and grandmother to do this...but no such luck!

For the kids, have a cookie decorating table set up. Also have supplies for decorating gingerbread houses. You can do this with the simple and inexpensive recipe by using hot glue to attach graham crackers to two small milk cartons. Use a powdered sugar icing to attach the candy and presto! Gingerbread houses!!!

For the adults and kids...you can't go wrong with a great game of charades. Everybody will laugh and giggle at each other being silly and enjoying their time spent together.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A BLESSED NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!

~Lee

Please check out my website, I make personalized mommy bracelets to order. www.freewebs.com/lolosgarden or send me a friend request on www.myspace.com/lolosgarden

Card games are what our family plays when we get together for the holidays. Put puzzles together. Have the kids do relay races by seeing how long they can keep an ornament on a spoon. Play Simon Says. Hide something and give the kids a map to try to find it. Get them some clay ornaments (just got my daughter a 4 pack that comes with paints for $2.50 in the craft section) from Wal-Mart they can paint.

If you don't already own it, buy yourself the game Cranium. It's excellent for large groups and everyone will be good at something. Each time your team has a turn you could be drawing pictures for your team to guess, correctly spelling a word, making clay sculptures for your team with play-doh, picking the right definition for an uncommon word, or answering a trivia question. There's also humming songs for the team to guess which is pretty darn funny. Some of the little ones won't know the songs, but then again, some of our adults didn't know them either! It's still funny. This is good for all ages to play together.

Hey V.,
We play the "hide the pickle" game... it's a tradition that goes way back (see link below), basically, we have a pickle Christmas ornament that gets placed on the tree by the host and the first person to find the pickle (which is hard to locate on a green tree!) gets a prize! It's kind of a simple game, but it's quick and fun...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pickle

Good luck and Merry Christmas!
D. R.

Have everyone (even the kids) bring a gift (set a limit on the amount the gift can cost) already wrapped...make a display of the gifts one for adults one for kids
start playing some christmas music and pass one gift around the room...stop the music randomly who ever has the gift when the music stops keeps the gift...play music again and pass 2nd gift around when music stops that person can either keep the gift or take the person who won befores gift...keep playing until all gifts are gone...we haven't tried it for christmas but it is a blast for birthday parties.
T.

Hi V.,

Here is something that my grandmother did last year and it was fun for the adults. She had all adults sit in a cirle and passed out scratch off Lucky 7's. (not sure how you feel about lottery tickets, but it was fun). Anyway, after we all scratched them off the winner was determined by what the scratch off revelead. She gave the winner a wrapped box and it was full of one dollar bills. How fun!! The whole family wasn't expecting there to be money in the box and we all started grabbing for the money etc....