Christmas Games with the family - 2025/12/25

It's Christmas! And instead of doing presents for every single person, a few years ago we decided each family would do fun Christmas Games with money as the prize! It's something we look forward to every year. There's always big laughs and lots of rivalry.  

It started with a classic. The one Theresa and I came up with years and years ago back in 2017. Balloon Darts! 

There's a twist this year though. Instead of random balloons holding a big big prize, we're bringing some skill into it. If you hit one of the gold balloons on your very first throw, you get a bonus $5 on top of whatever the balloon has inside. 

It's difficult to say who the winner was overall since all the money was randomly won, but everybody had a good time. 

For our next game, Aubrey and Jared are doing a variation on the doubles dice game. I'm used to playing this as the saran wrap game, where the saran wrap ball gets passed around and you unwrap as fast as you can until the person after you rolls doubles. This time though, we're trying to write the numbers 1 to 100 as fast as we can. 

Who uses pen and paper that much anymore? Richard and Chi most likely. We're all at a disadvantage! 

Joe - Okay Richard, make sure you do it right. O - N - E, T - W - O, T - H - R - E - E.

It was a very fast paced game with lots of people only being a couple numbers away when they had to give up the pen. Alli was writing out 100, having written 1-0 and Ian got a double. Crazy. 

Our next game we're doing a version of password/charades. Every single person in the room got 3 slips of paper and wrote 1) a person, 2) a place, 3) a thing. Once all those slips of paper were collected, teams were chosen (boys vs girls) and the game began. 

For the first round, you could use and description you wanted but not the word itself. 

For the second round, we used the same pieces of paper, but this time you could only use a single word and no gestures. I hope you have a good memory about what the answers were for the first round. And remember, don't say "Umm" when you start. That counts as your only word!

And finally, the last round you have to be completely silent, but can use any gestures and acting that you want. 

It got a little heated during some rounds... but in the end after all the points were added up, it was a tie! While some were pushing for a tie-breaker, the peace-makers of the group were happy to declare everyone the winners. 

Ian and Alli have a game this year! Shuffleboard! 

I thought they had a clever way to pick the matchups. A deck of cards, with only 1-8 picked out with just the hearts and spades. 1 of spades versus the 1 of hearts and whoever is holding the heart goes first. Sounds fair to me! 

And you're throwing all 4 of your pieces without any interference from your opponent. No knocking anyone off the board. 

The only real advantage was going second, because you knew what score you had to beat. 

For 3rd and 4th place, Theresa matched up with Jared. Theresa started out with a very solid score of 9, one of the highest we'd seen, but Jared called his shot and sent all 4 of his markers down the table and into the 3 scoring zone. A score of 12! Impressive. 

For the Championship round, Richard and Carson matched up. 

After a tie for the first round, Carson narrowly pulled out the win on his very last throw, scoring 2 points to make 6, just beating Richard's 5. 

Rita and Ty bring us our next game, which is a combination of the cup flip game and tic tac toe. Once you successfully land your cup, you can place it anywhere you want, but someone can come along after you and put their cup on top of yours to win that square. 

We had to restart the game because some of the cups were shaped different and didn't land like the others. That's why you'll see cups that look like the same color in the end (though there is a black mark on the top to distinguish them). 

Congratulations to Tyler, Ethan, Ian, and Aubrey for winning!

Ethan's game this year was a Jeopardy Christmas themed game. He split everyone into teams and each team would write their question on a piece of paper to confirm their answer. 

These were random Christmas questions like "These are the 3D reindeer." "Japan celebrates Christmas with this food." "The Rockettes perform at this location in New York."

The only question my team missed was "Christmas Trees originated in this country." We thought it might be the Netherlands instead of the correct answer, Germany. 

The team that got every single question correct. But wait. There's still final Jeopardy. 

For final Jeopardy, each team had to place a wager on if they'd get it right or wrong. We'd have 6 choices to choose from for the correct answer. 

Yikes! This is not regular Christmas knowledge, is it? 

On average, what is the total Christmas spending in the United States every year? 

1) 250 Billion

2) 500 Billion

3) 750 Billion

4) 1 Trillion

5) 1.25 Trillion

6) Greater than 1.25 Trillion

Only one team got it correct, and that might have been because something Ian read for school recently said $1 Trillion and he remembered it. Congratulations to the winners! 

Carson and Abby's game consists of a Christmas Detective Escape Room type challenge. 

Each team got a bundle with lots of different envelopes in them. You opened an envelope and had a puzzle of some sort to figure out. The answer would lead you to the next envelope in the chain until finally you readed the end. The four teams were Joe, Austin, Chi. 

Richard, Ethan, Amy. 

Don, Rita, Aubrey, and Ian. 

And Tyler, Jared, Alli, and Theresa. 

These types of games are right up my alley. We ended up coming in first place! We only had to use 1 hint, and that's because I think this part of the game was broken (the decoder didn't match up with all the letters). Good job team! 

For our final game, Amy and Don have brought us a game with string, cups, and ping pong balls. It's a team game where you and your partner hold a string taut, roll a ping pong ball down it, and try to land it in a cup. Everyone lined up by birth month, and then were paired off to form a team. 

I was teamed up with Alli, and we made it all the way to the finals, where we lost to Austin and Jared who take winning way too seriously... Congrats to them!

It was definitely a lot of fun doing games like this for Christmas. And more than the money and prizes, it's the memories and laughing that we'll remember for years to come.