Christmas is the one time of year when everyone ends up in the same room: small children, teenagers, parents, grandparents and the cousin you see once a year. The meal is planned weeks ahead, but the hours around it usually are not. Here are 15 things to do at Christmas with family, friends and relatives, sorted by who is at the table, starting with the ones that work for every age at once.
Christmas Activities for the Whole Family
1. Play Christmas Bingo After Dinner
Bingo is the rare game that every generation already knows. Grandparents grew up with it, children can play as soon as they recognise numbers, and nobody has to explain rules while the dessert goes round. Print a card for everyone, put the free bingo caller on the TV with its Christmas theme, and let it draw and read out the numbers, so whoever hosts can play too. For small children, swap numbers for words: on word bingo cards everyone gets the same Christmas words in a different order. Our free printable Christmas bingo cards come in two festive designs with a word list ready to paste.
2. Bake and Decorate Gingerbread Together
Make the dough in the morning and decorate in the afternoon. Give everyone a plate, a bag of icing and a bowl of sprinkles: small children decorate two biscuits and run off, teenagers build a gingerbread house, and someone always eats the roof. Bake one extra tray to take to a neighbour.
3. Watch the Family's Christmas Film
Every family has the film that comes back every year, whether it is Home Alone, Elf or It's a Wonderful Life. Let the youngest choose one evening and the oldest the next, and keep the remote with whoever made dinner.
4. Go for a Christmas Walk
After a heavy meal, a walk is the best thing everyone can do together. Go and look at the lights, visit a Christmas market or take the sledges out if there is snow. If Christmas falls in summer where you live, make it the beach or the park.
5. Start a Big Jigsaw Puzzle
Put a 1000-piece puzzle on a side table on Christmas Eve. Nobody has to sit with it; people add a few pieces as they pass, and the family finishes it together before New Year.
Things to Do at Christmas With Kids
6. Make Paper Snowflakes and Homemade Decorations
Paper snowflakes, salt-dough ornaments and paper chains cost almost nothing and keep children busy while the kitchen is full. Hang everything they make, even the lopsided ones.
7. Hide the Last Present for a Treasure Hunt
Keep one present back and hide it somewhere in the house. Write five or six clues on cards, each leading to the next, and let the children solve them together. Older children can write the clues for the younger ones.
8. Put On a Christmas Play
Give the children an hour, a box of dressing-up clothes and one rule: the show must be under ten minutes. It can be the nativity, a story they invent or a re-run of the film they just watched. Adults buy tickets with chocolate coins.
9. Write Letters to Santa, Then Thank-You Notes
Before Christmas, the children write to Santa. After it, they draw thank-you cards for the people who sent presents. Grandparents keep those cards for years.
Things to Do at Christmas With Friends
10. Swap Gifts With Secret Santa
Draw names in early December, set a price limit and swap the gifts at your get-together. For a louder version, play a white elephant swap: everyone brings one wrapped gift, players take turns to open one or steal one already opened, and the most wanted gift changes hands all evening.
11. Host a Potluck "Friendsmas"
One person hosts, everyone brings a dish, and nobody spends the day in the kitchen alone. Add one rule that makes it memorable, such as a dish from the country you would most like to spend Christmas in.
12. Play Christmas Observation Bingo
This version is for adults. Instead of numbers, each card holds things that happen at every Christmas get-together, and players mark them when they happen. Add them as words in the word bingo generator, which shuffles every card, and agree on a prize before the first square goes. Some to start with:
- Someone falls asleep on the sofa
- The same Christmas song plays twice
- Someone says they are too full for dessert, then has dessert
- A present is socks
- Someone tells the story everyone has heard before
- The pet steals food from the table
- A paper crown ends up on someone's head
- Someone asks whether it will snow this year
Things to Do at Christmas With Grandparents and Relatives
13. Ask the Grandparents About Their Christmases
Ask what Christmas was like when they were children: what they ate, what presents they got, what they did on the evening itself. Bring out old photo albums and record the answers on a phone; in a few years that recording is the present.
14. Let the Older Generation Teach Their Game
Most grandparents have a game they played at Christmas, from card games to bingo. In Italy it is tombola, drawn from a bag of numbers after Christmas dinner. Let them teach the rules, call the numbers and decide any argument. It is their evening.
15. Write a Christmas Quiz About the Family
Collect twenty questions: who once burnt the turkey, which year it snowed, whose baby photo is this. Make teams of mixed ages so that the grandparents' memory and the teenagers' speed are both needed.
The Days Between Christmas and New Year
The days after Christmas are for leftovers, long breakfasts and the puzzle. Keep the bingo cards on the shelf for a rematch, take the walk you skipped, and when the plans for the last night of the year come up, our guide to New Year's Eve has ideas for that too. Planning the work party instead? See office Christmas party bingo.
How to Set Up Christmas Bingo at Home in 10 Minutes
- Choose numbers or words. Numbers work for every age that can read them; words are better for young children and for the observation game above.
- Make the cards. In the bingo card generator, choose the Christmas (Classic) or Christmas (Modern) background. For grandparents, choose 1 Card Per Page (Large) and the Bold font. The free PDF holds up to 240 cards, with a small bingosheets.net line under the grid.
- Open the caller. Put the bingo caller on the TV or a laptop and choose the Christmas theme. It draws each number once, reads it out and shows it on the board, and once the page is open it keeps working without an internet connection. Number cards carry a short code: when someone shouts bingo, Check a card in the caller shows whether the card really has a line.
- Choose prizes nobody has to buy. The first pick from the chocolate box, a night off washing up, choosing the next film or the last piece of cake. They are the ones people play hardest for.
One card per page with bold numbers is the easiest size for grandparents and small children to read.