When families and friends get together and everyone is feeling the festive spirit, it’s a great time to break out the games and bring on the laughter.
With family, it’s a guaranteed way to get the kids (and some adults) off their phones and get them to join in on a fun, bonding activity. With friends, you can make it even more interesting by adding some holiday cocktails to the mix!
These five games are definite crowd-pleasers and will leave you with lasting memories to reflect on well into the new year.
Family Trivia
Get to know the faces around the table even better with an exciting game of family trivia. Have everyone write down three fun facts about themselves and add them to a bowl. Read them aloud and have guests try to correctly figure out which fun fact belongs to whom. Allocate a point to each correct guess and give the winner a fun, festive prize.
Holiday Charades or Pictionary
Whether your gathering is full of amateur artists or acting aficionados, you can add a holiday twist to everyone's favourite acting or drawing games. Split your guests into two teams and use festive-themed movie titles, songs, or objects to turn it into a topical activity and see which team emerges victorious.
White Elephant
This gift exchange activity has many names but no matter what you call it, it's bound to be a good time! It works best with a minimum of six people, and everyone needs to bring a gift (valued at a limit of R50 or R100) to play the game, so make sure to plan the game and notify everyone in advance.
Everyone places their wrapped gifts in a pile and then draws numbers to decide who picks first. The person with number one chooses a present to unwrap. The person with number two can then choose a new, wrapped present from the pile, or take the unwrapped present from the first person. If they take the present from the first person, that person must then choose another present to unwrap. The person with the number three may choose any previously unwrapped present from the people who went before them or a new, wrapped one, and so on. Each present can only be “stolen” three times to ensure a fair game. The game continues until all presents have been unwrapped and everyone has a gift. Define all the rules before the game begins to prevent chaos.
30 Seconds
A favourite for any gathering, there’s nothing quite like 30 Seconds to test the general knowledge of your team and the personal relationships between friends or family. Split your guests into a maximum of four teams and see which team’s smarts get them to the finish line first.
To make it festive, prepare a few of your own cards with festive-themed objects, movies, songs and even celebrities who have a special connection to the holidays, and stick them to the back of the regular cards to keep things interesting.
Giant Jenga
Take advantage of the beautiful weather we have over the festive season and bring out the lawn games. Giant Jenga is always a winner and will keep spectators on the edge of their seats as they watch players try to keep a steady hand and prevent the tower of wooden blocks from collapsing.
Write actions like “sing a Christmas song”, “talk in an accent” or "pull another block" on each block to make it more fun and keep spirits high.