Every year we spend Christmas Eve with my mom’s side of the family. I absolutely love my family and feel so lucky that that I have the unique situation in which all of my family members live in the same town. This year we all decided that we needed to spice up our Christmas Eve a bit and so I offered to plan some games for us to play. After some research and lots of creativity I developed sixteen games that made this Christmas Eve the best one that we have ever had. We all died laughing for hours and everyone had a fun, yet competitive, spirit.

I wrote everyone’s name on tongue depressors and recruited my littlest cousin, Anna, to pick the contestants for each game. Every person brought 2 scratch-off lottery tickets and I collected these all in a gift bag. Each winner chose a lottery ticket from the bag, or had the opportunity to steal a ticket from someone who had already won. At random times, I also picked a few names for “random prize winning” and these people got to pick a lottery ticket. No one was allowed to scratch the tickets until the end!

Dice Stacking Game

Five contestants hold a tongue depressor between their teeth and try to stack six dice on the end of the tongue depressor without dropping them. It’s difficult to do if you keep laughing!

Jingle Bells

One contestant is given five closed buckets. The buckets have 1 bell, 2 bells, 3 bells, 4 bells, or 5 bells in each. The contestant must use only the sound to put the buckets in order from 1 bell to 5 bells. Aunt Judy was so close, but Claire was our second contestant who figured it out right away!

Fat Snowman

This is played exactly like “Chubby Bunny” but contestants say “Fat Snowman” instead. The four contestants take turns putting a marshmallow in their mouths and saying “Fat Snowman” until they can’t fit anymore marshmallows in their mouths. Billy and Katie were the final two and Billy finally beat out his sister as Fat Snowman champion. I had to stop watching this one about halfway through because I don’t have the stomach for watching those kind of things!

Rudolph’s Sticky Nose

Four participants held a piece of ribbon between their teeth, which had a red pompom attached to the other end. Each contestant put Vaseline on their nose and then had to try to get the red pompom to stick their nose without using their hands. My grandma even played this one!

Snowy Kisses

Three contestants tried to unwrap and eat as many Hershey’s kisses as they can while wearing snow gloves in three minutes. It is a lot harder than it seems!

Cookie Decorating

Two pairs of contestants competed in a race to decorate and eat a cookie. After one team member was blindfolded with a scarf, I set up the cookie decorating supplies. The team member who was not blindfolded had to give directions to their partner to help them decorate their cookie using all five of the decorations. The catch: the person giving directions could not use the words “right” or “left.” After a judge confirmed that the cookie was frosted and decorated appropriately, the blindfolded person had to feed the cookie to their teammate. The first team with the cookie completely decorated and eaten wins!

Cup Stacking

Two contestants have to stack 40 cups in any design before their opponent using their non-dominant hand. This picture is right after my whole stack fell causing me to fall way behind!

Ornament Challenge

My 19-year-old brother Patrick and my 10-year-old cousin Anna competed against each other to hang ten ornaments on a a string of ribbon using only their mouths. I attached a white ribbon to two chairs and divided it in half by hanging a small piece of red ribbon. Each player had to pick up their ten ornaments from the ground with their mouths and hang the ornaments on their side of the ribbon. Patrick was winning, until Anna put an ornament on, knocking off a few of his and putting him behind!

The Search for Rudolph

In this challenge, four people must find Rudolph’s nose (a red gumball or a big red gummy) in a snowstorm (plate full of whipped cream). The four contestants turned around and we placed Rudolph’s nose in a different spot on each plate and then filled the plate with whipped cream. We then allowed the contestants to turn around and they had to race to find Rudolph’s nose using only their mouths. We all died laughing as my cousin Katie shoved her face in and immediately emerged with the candy in her mouth. The game lasted for only a few seconds!

Snowman Wrap Up

Six people partnered up to play Snowman Wrap Up in which one partner had to wrap the other person in three rolls of toilet paper before their opponents. I bought toilet paper from a dollar store, which I do NOT recommend! The toilet paper was so cheap that it kept falling apart, which definitely made it more interesting and funny, but it was really hard! I recommend getting nine rolls of quality toilet paper!

Cookie Gobble

This game was hilarious to watch. Six contestants had to start with a gingerbread cookie on their forehead, get it to their mouths, and eat the cookie without using their hands. If you drop the cookie, you have to start all over! Whoever eats the cookie first, wins!

Christmas Charades

In my opinion, Christmas Charades was the funniest game of the night. Everyone was really into the games by the time we played this one so it got really intense (in a good way)! We were all laughing and yelling out answers as the contestants acted out Christmas movie titles. The best part was when Anna, my littlest cousin, took her turn and no one could figure out what she was acting out. Everyone was yelling and guessing anything that they could think (“Christmas Jump” was a popular answer?), but Anna was having no luck. Finally, I went to help her out because even I couldn’t figure it out and I made the index cards with the movie titles on them. When I saw her index card, I started laughing so hard that I was crying and when I finally got it together I told everyone that I accidentally left my index card in the “picking bag” which labeled the game. I labeled every game with the title so that I would easily know where each game was during the party. However, I forgot to take that out so poor Anna was acting out “Christmas Charades” and its no wonder no one could guess it!

Candy Transport

Four contestants had to transport m&ms on a wooden spoon held by their teeth to a bucket across the room. This game was too easy, so I would recommend adding an obstacle on the way to the bucket!

Snowball Shake

In this game, three people competed to shake all of the snowballs out of their snowball maker. Each contestant had an empty tissue box tied around their waists with six ping-pong balls in the box. They had to shake until the first person got all six snowballs out of their tissue box. You will need to cut some of the plastic off from around the opening in the tissue box. It is almost impossible to get the ping-pong balls out if you leave the box as it comes.

Snowball Fight

Four contestants paired up to play this game. One partner had a bucket and one partner had a bag of marshmallows. Each person had to stand behind a certain point and the team had two minutes to throw/catch as many marshmallows as possible in their bucket. The team with the most marshmallows in their bucket wins!

Candy Cane Pass

This game doesn’t have any winners, but it is a fun way to include every person in the last game of the night. Everyone holds a candy cane between his/her teeth and one candy cane is passed around the circle. You can only use the candy cane in your mouth to pass the game cane around the circle. It was a great way to end our hilarious game night!

After all of the lottery tickets were given out, we passed out coins and everyone was allowed to scratch their tickets at the same time. We had a few winners in the crowd!

This was by far the best Christmas Eve that we have ever had. Our family is so close and always has so much fun, but these games brought our closeness to a whole new level. We just can’t wait to play new games next year!

Merry Christmas!