12 Days of Christmas Games—Ideas for Families or Fun Secret Santa Gifts for Neighbors

This new idea for the 12 days of Christmas will help your family celebrate your holiday with laughter. Or, gather the supplies and give them to a lucky family for their 12 days of Christmas! You can get a lot of these supplies at the Dollar Tree, and I also have links for Amazon on some as well.

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Christmas Party Game #1: Candy Cane Swirl. Place a set of plastic candy canes on top of a large candy cane (or broomstick). Swirl the candy canes around the large candy cane and see who can keep the last one on the longest!

Supplies:

• Plastic candy canes

• Large candy cane from the Dollar Tree, or use a broom handle 

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Christmas Party Game #2: Sleigh Rides and Presents. Help Santa prepare the gifts for his sled! Try to launch foam cube "presents" onto the toy sled (see the last half of the video below). To make it simpler for little ones, have a race to stack the gifts on the sled the fastest, or make it more challenging for older kids and teens by seeing who can stack the gifts the highest.

Supplies:

• Foam cubes

• Toy sleigh or ornament; you can also create your own from craft sticks like the ones in the third image below.

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Christmas Party Game #3: Jingle Bell Snatch. Place small jingle bells of multiple colors inside a gift bag. Take turns rolling two dice. If you roll doubles, you get to use a reacher grabber tool to pull out your assigned color of jingle bells. When the next person rolls doubles, they get to use the claw grabber to reach for their color. You can make it harder for adults by having to find your jingle bells with your eyes closed.

 Supplies:

• Jingle bells in multiple colors

• Reacher grabber tool (We got ours at the Dollar Tree, or you can find it on Amazon.) 

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Christmas Party Game #4: Boughs and Arrows. Gather some small holly boughs picks (or as close as you can get) and a plastic wreath from the Dollar Tree (with lots of gaps in a wreath frame). Use the holly bough picks as an arrow and try to get them to stick in the wreath.

• Supplies:

• Holly bough picks

• Wreath that picks can go through

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Christmas Party Game #5. Ornament Sing-along. Play your favorite Christmas tunes and look for matching items on a Christmas tree filled with ornaments—it's holiday Bingo with a twist! (But if you want actual Christmas Song Bingo boards, we have 10 downloadable sheets for you here, too!)

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Christmas Party Game #6: Stocking Stuffer. Gather your Christmas stockings and some toilet paper (you can pick up packs of 4 for $1 at the Dollar Tree). Then race to see who can unroll a toilet paper roll and stuff it into a Christmas stocking the fastest!

Supplies:

• 4-pack of toilet paper from the Dollar Tree

• Christmas stockings

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Christmas Party Game #7: Journey to Bethlehem. Write scriptures verses and names of individuals in the nativity story on cards. Place the cards in a line or circle on the table. Take turns rolling a die and moving along the board (we use the Wise Men from our nativity); when someone lands on a space they get to read the scripture verse or share what they know about the individual.

Supplies:

• Small cards

• Game pieces (we used the Wise Men from our nativity)

• Game die

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Christmas Party Game #8: Edible Ornaments. Find a small Christmas tree or tree decoration and hang doughnuts from it on a string (we just held up the tree to give it height). Then race to see who can eat their donut the fastest. We like to use doughnut holes with sprinkles (tie a string around the outside) or the powdered Hostess Donettes—even though they're messier we like that they look like snowball ornaments.

Supplies:

• Tree decoration

• Doughnut holes with sprinkles or Hostess donettes

• String

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Christmas Party Game #9: Candy Cane Launch. This game uses the same supplies from game #1 (Candy Cane Swirl). This time, you're going to try to launch (not spin) the candy canes. Give each person a large candy cane and see what cool tricks you can come up with to have one person launch a small plastic candy cane from the large one to another large candy cane with a teammate.

Supplies:

• Plastic candy canes

• Large candy cane from the Dollar Tree, or use a broom handle 

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Supplies:

• Burned-out Bulbs printable Christmas party game

•  Toy dart gun or small balls you can throw

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Christmas Party Game #11: Season's Greetings Scramble. Gather foam letters or letter cards and use them to spell season's greetings, like "merry Christmas," "happy holidays," "feliz navidad," "joy to the world," and more. Then take turns forming words with those letters. If you can't think of one within the time limit (choose based on age of players) or if you duplicate a word someone else already used, you're out. Play until one person is left as the winner!

Supplies:

• Foam letters (We have a few sets that I got on clearance, but you can also write letters on note cards.) 

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Christmas Party Game #12: Pin the Nose on Rudolph. Bring a fun twist to the classic party game. To prep, punch several red-nose circles and put double-sided tape on them. Then have everyone crawl on all fours (like a reindeer) and try to get the nose in place. Make sure to have them move slowly, and have someone make sure they don't hit the wall with force. The closest nose to turn your reindeer into Rudolph wins!

Supplies:

• Red cardstock circles (Try this 1.5" circle punch to make it easier.)

• Reindeer image (My very talented sister made this from poster board.) 

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