Ideas for silly family Christmas party games, please!

[JudithOfThePiece]

I am in charge of organising a Christmas party which will be attended by people of all ages, including some families. We like to have a lot of silly games, usually organised in randomly chosen teams. In the past, we've had games like miming the twelve days of Christmas, moving chocolate buttons from one bowl to another with straws and wink murder. There needs to be some element of competition, it needs to be fun and it ideally needs to be suitable for kids and adults to work together, although there aren't usually any kids under 12.

My mind is a total blank for what games we can do this year, so can anyone out there give me some inspiration, please?!

We played bingo one year and it turned into a complete farce.... my dad photocopied a Sun bingo card.... not realising it was daft until every one of us shouted HOUSE at the same time.....

I recently went to a party where a friend had done a variation on apple bobbing by thread mini doughnuts on strings and suspending them from a door frame and a few of us went at a time and had to eat them without using our hands in a race. Silly but fun.

This book has loads of good ideas - for card and dice games too, and I really recommend it.

There's a game I've played with adults which should work with older kids too: Everyone gets 3 slips of paper and writes a thing on each - anything they like.

The slips are all folded up and put into a bowl/hat. Divide people into teams of around 4-6 people.

There are 3 rounds of the game. The first round is describing: One member of the first team has a minute minute to pick out and describe as many items as they can to the rest of their team (like Articulate). House rules may vary but you could either allow one or more 'passes'. The team keeps all those they correctly guess and then play passes to the next team who do the same thing. It goes round and round until all the items have gone.

Add up how many each team have won then fold them all back up and put them back in the bowl.

Round 2 follows the same format but is 1min of mime (Charades).

Round 3 (by which point you've gained some familiarity with the set of words) is where the describe can only use one word for each item.

You can tweak timings depending on the size of the group (eg 2 mins for each team) and can decide whether every member of the team has to have ago at describing/miming.

The winner is the team with the most points at the end of all 3 rounds.

Hope that makes sense!

Paper telephone: a mix between consequences and Chinese whispers.

Everyone has a sheet of paper and at the top writes a phrase - could be a proverb, an advertising slogan, or just a random caption like "Phil was looking forward to his birthday" etc

They then pass the sheet round to their neighbour but (unlike in consequences) do NOT fold it over. So the phrase is still visible. The neighbour then has to draw a picture (no words) representing the caption they've just received. So if it was "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" they would draw, well, a fox jumping over a dog.

Then they fold it over so that the phrase is covered, but not the picture. Then pass it on. So the next person looks at the picture and writes the caption they feel describes it. Then they fold again to cover the picture but not their caption, and pass it on so the next person draws a picture to represent their caption, and so it continues. Each time the paper is passed only the most recent addition - caption OR picture - is visible.

You carry on until either it's traveled the whole circle, or thereabouts (it mustn't get to the person who started it though IYSWIM because they would already know the caption), or until the paper is filled up, but you need to make sure the last round is a writing one not a drawing one. Then you all open them up and laugh at how the original caption has probably morphed into something completely different and/or ridiculous.

Empires is good for a couple of rounds.

Choose a person to be leader. Everone else writes down a well known name on a piece of paper (secretly) and gives to the leader.

The leader reads all the names out, adding in two extra names of their choosing. So if 8 people are playing, the leader will read out ten names.

Then everyone takes it in turns to guess who is who (the leader doesn't guess, just facilitates). So eg youngest goes first and asks 'Granny, are you Ghengis Khan' If granny has not written Gengis Khan she says no and it's her turn to guess - 'Uncle John are you Katie Price?'
Granny guessed right! Uncle John is Katie Price. Uncle John is now in granny's empire and has to go and sit with her. Now he can help Granny to guess (but cannot guess individually as he has already been got). Granny asks again but if she gets it wrong it's the person she asked turn to guess.

But if cousin Tim guesses Granny correctly (granny are you Gerard Butler for eg) then cousin Tim gets granny and Uncle John in his empire. And they all go and squash up on the sofa with him)

The aim is to not be guessed and conquer everyone into your empire.

The trick us to chose a name no one would think you would chose and for it to be a bit unusual or dull so that when the list is read out at the beginning people forget who us on it and tend to keep guessing the obvious names.

Choose, chose, ya know wots I mean.

Ring on a string. The larger the group you play with the more fun it is.

cut a length of string long enough to stretch around everyone in the room, sitting in a rough circle. Put a ring onto the string and knot the two ends together.

Choose someone to go in the middle, they close their eyes for ten seconds while people frantically slide the ring around the string. The object is to keep it hidden. The person in the middle has to watch and gets three guesses as to who has the ring.

It's such a simple game but is hilarious when you have people standing on chairs to make a huge slope to slide the ring down when the guessers back is turned, wearing the ring, cutting the string and adding decoy rings etc etc.

Oh you lovely lot, I just knew you'd have some good ideas!! Thank you. There are some fab suggestions here.

More welcome, of course!!

Have you ever played "Ibble Dibble"?

Everyone gets a number (Ibble Dibble 1, Ibble Dibble 2 etc), and starts off with no "dibbles".

You have to "call" each other, very quickly - "Ibble Dibble 2 calling Ibble Dibble 7", "Ibble Dibble 7 calling Ibble Dibble 5", "Ibble Dibble 5 calling Ibble Dibble 1" etc etc

If you hesitate, you get a "dibble" - a mark on your face - tratitionally done with a burnt cork, but felt pen would do.

Then you become "Ibble Dibble 1 with 1 dibble" and you have to call others thusly: "Ibble Dibble 1 with one dibble calling Ibble Dibble 3 with no dibbles".

The game gets chaotic when everyone gets several dibbles, as you forget how many you have (can't se 'em), and so get more dibbles each time you make a mistake.

Has kept us going for hours at parties.

Everyone chooses an animal sound and action...
You go around the room all doing in turn their sound and action.. Eg cat = miaow and washes your nose with paw.
Then, the game starts..
I do my sound and action (cat) and then somebody else's sound and action, eg (dog = woof and hands up on head as ears.)
The person who has the dog sound and action, then starts with their action (woof and hands up on head as ears) and then somebody else's sound and action, eg (mouse= eee eee, and nibble hands).
The person who has the mouse sound and action, then starts with their action (eee eee and nibble hands) and then somebody else's.
They do their own and somebody else's
They do their own and somebody else's

That's basically it.

We did this the day after my sister's wedding as a family... I will never ever forget my dear Grampy (sadly no longer with us), standing up and pretending to be a giraffe with the most original sound!!! Bless him...

Mars bar game.

Put a Mars bar on a tray with a knife and fork, hat and gloves.

Each player takes turns throwing a dice. When a six is throne that person puts on the hat and gloves and starts to eat the Mars bar with the knife and fork. The dice still gets thrown until another person gets a six and they then take over etc until the Mars bar has gone.

*thrown

Every person at the table must write down a slogan from a famous company.

One at a time each person reads their chosen slogan out, then must say "in my pants"

Such as, if I wrote down "every little helps" (Tesco), I must then read out loud "every little helps in my pants"

fuzzpig your "Paper telephone" is the game we call "Whispering Gallery"! It's a good game, isn't it?

Love your bingo story Stardust

I'm just going to be playing 'Dont kill the Mil'

It involves none of us killing my mil. That is all.

That's a great name for it Norman :o

Shake ya Booty:

Thread a belt or a scarf through the bottom of an empty tissue box, fill box with ping pong balls and tie round waist, play music and the first player to empty their box wins.

We play 'Squeak piggies squeal' blindfold one person spin them round, while people move seats, then get the blindfolded person to find someone's knee to sit on that person has to squeak and squeal and the blindfolded person has to guess who they are. 3 guesses and they have to try again.

trying to get an after8 from your forehead to your mouth without using any hands!! always good fun, particularly if its a little warm as the chocolate starts to melt!!!!!

Put a tennis ball in some tights, place tights on head, so tennis ballo hangs down. Line up empty pop bottles, try and knock them down with tennis ball. Get an empty tissue box, put three ping pong balls in, tape the tissue box to someone's bum. Get them to bounce around till the Ping pings balls are released. Marvellous :-)

Wrap a few token presents in varying size boxes. All the family sits round in a circle. You need 2 packs of cards. One pack is shared out amongst the family. One family member, usually nanny, reads the card out from the other pack. The person with the matching card picks a present from the middle. You then go through the whole pack, happily stealing and grabbing presents off other family members. The kids tend to go for the largest boxes. Total mayhem. We love it!

The Sofa Game. You need two teams, male vs female is simplest. The aim of the game is to get three of your team sitting on the same sofa. Everyone writes their own name of a slip of paper, then shuffle them and each person takes one. You then 'become' whatever name you are currently holding.
The sofa in question starts off with one person from each team and a space, everyone else needs somewhere to sit round the room.
The person to the left of the space says a name, and whoever has that bit of paper moves into the space, and swaps with the caller. This frees up another space somewhere in the room, and whoever is to the left of that space calls a name, and so on....
Because everyone swaps names all the time it is very difficult to keep track of who is who especially after a few bevvies and much hilarity results.

Draw A Monster! Brilliant because everyone can play.

It's basically Consequences but with drawing. Everyone draws a monster head at the top of a piece of paper, folds it over and passes it on. Next person draws the body (with arms / tendrils / noodly appendages as appropriate) and passes on again. Then the legs. Then the feet. Then unfold and admire.

Even my dad plays this one. Mainly because he can draw horrid anatomically correct bug body parts and make his grandkids squeal.

We also like "Categories" and "The forehead game".

Categories - you decide on several categories, e.g. countries of the world/colours/things you might find on a restaurant menu/birds etc. Then pick three letters of the alphabet. Everybody has to write down something from each category beginning with the chosen letters (so if the letters were A, G and T you might write down Azerbaijan, Guatemala and Turkey for countries, Aqua, Green and Turquoise for colours etc). Set a time limit, and when the time is up you score the answers. 2 points if you get an answer that no-one else has chosen, 1 point if you get the same answer as someone else, no points if you didn't get an answer.

The forehead game - choose the name of someone famous (it could be someone real or a fictional character, or a real person who isn't famous but is known to the people you are playing the game with, such as a family member or friend). Write the name on a piece of paper and stick it to the forehead of the person to your left. Everyone has to take turns asking questions to try and guess who they are. Questions can only be ones you can answer yes or no to (such as "Am I male?" "Am I a sports personality?" "Am I a character in a book?" etc). Winner is the first person to guess who they are.

I did a quiz last year with very silly prizes and questions about Christmas traditions like 3 different names for santa, the prizes were all like pound shop tat, hair extensions that my uncle wore along with a glittery mask at one point