Family Holiday Party

We have a couple of favorite game that can include everyone. I make a list of Christmas songs and carols - they can be secular or religious, but a mixture is funner. Then either play pictionary or charades. Draw out a title, then either act it out or draw it. We sometimes divide into teams, but not always, it can be funner to just all participate.
Another idea, similar, is to give everyone a paper with topics on it: song, person, object, animal, etc and have them fill in the answers. Put all the papers in a bowl, and when a person draws it out they can choose which thing on the paper to act out. This take very little prep time, and doesn't cost much, either. Half the fun is to watch the faces of the kids when Grandpa starts acting things out!

At our family party every year we do a really fun gift exchange that tends to get people involved and laughing. All the little kids just have a present under the tree with their name on it. All the adults bring a gift for someone of their gender. We put red tags on the female gifts and blue tags on the male gifts. Then we all draw numbers. As your number is called you get to choose a gift from under the tree or steal someone else's gift and then they have to pick a new one etc. It gets pretty animated. One thing we do that makes it really fun is there is a major gag gift in one present, usually the biggest most elaboratly wrapped, haha. And the same gag gift is passed on from year to year. Its really fun. Hope that helps and you get other good ideas!

My family loves games - any kind of games. You can always have card or board games sitting on tables. One big activity game is always welcome, examples: Christmas Jeopardy, the Newlywed Game, whatever game show you can incorporate to your family. Christmas Jeopardy doesn't need to be religious, it could have categories like: "popular holiday songs" where some of the lyrics are given and they have to give the song title, "something you wouldn't want to receive for Christmas,"...silly categories like that. The Newlywed Game needs to include silly questions that will be hard to answer and some that could be easy, just try to incorporate some holiday questions in there like: What was the best Christmas present you've ever given your wife? or What is the most popular holiday tradition in your house? This should get a bunch of people gathered together just for an hour or two of laughs. It doesn't need to be presented like a baby-shower game, but a fun way to get people talking. That's why I say pick a game that your family may want to watch and participate in. Not all the adults have to participate, but if you pick a few from each family, that should get the others watching and talking.

We always do a white elephant gift exchange. People bring goofy gifts and it gets everyone laughing. The candy bar game is also a good one. I am pretty sure most people know these games, but if you need instructions, just let me know.

One year I got on the internet and printed a Christmas bingo game off. I copied 50 or so cards and laminated them. We have used them a few times when we have had to plan a party around the holidays. We used smarties or M & M's to put on each thing called. Everyone (adults to kids) gets into it because your saying bingo a ton. The prize is usually candy or something like that. One side of my family we had an Aunt that would play this game whenever she had to plan the family party. But since she passed away we have played it a few times even though we know what is inside each present. What we do is buy the individual size M & M's (peanut usually) but you could use whatever you like. Then you get all sorts of different size boxes and put a candy in each. Wrap the package. So all 50 packages would have the same item but they are all different shapes and sizes. Then when you play the game, one person picks a present, the next person can steal that present or pick from the pile. We usually put a limit on how many times that present can be stolen. Everyone really gets into this because they think one present is better than the other. Once everyone has a present and get to the end, you have everyone open the presents at the same time. Then they will see everyone has the same thing. It is a lot of fun. You could search the internet for other ideas. I hope this helps you out. Good luck.

My family and I have done a Holiday Activity every year together there is almost 25 of us with 11 of them being Kids. We have done a Neighborhood scavenger hunt. Where we paired adults and kids together, and gave them a list of 6-8 Holiday things to find or build in the neighborhood. Each team had their own digital Camera to take a picture of the item. We all met back together and shared the photos on our projector tv. It was so much fun plus we print the photos and add to our family activity scrapbook. Which is the 2nd activity we have for Adults(mostly the women) but we get the men involved by wrtting what they remember or journaling, things like that. Well I hope this helps.