Come Christmas time, many choose to gather with friends and family and enjoy the season. If you are planning a gathering of this sort, consider adding some game play to enliven your planned party. By engaging guests in games for which they can win prizes, you can make your affair an even more festive one. Start simple by preparing door prize games in which all guests, young and small, can take part. Look to ProFlower’s Christmas gift collection for sure-to-please door prizes to award the winners.
As any school child knows, Santa is a sprightly, albeit portly, fellow who can pop up anywhere. Make this Christmas patriarch’s presence apparent at your event by planning a Santa search door prize game. As you prepare for your party, purchase or create Santa cutouts. Hide five or 10 of these cutouts around your space, slipping them between your couch cushions or sliding them under dishes on the buffet table. Create a sign that reads “find me, get a prize” and place a cutout on the sign. Put the sign by your front door next to a table of prizes from which guests can select if they find one of these hidden cutouts.
Keep guests on their toes with a Christmas clothespins game. Before your party, create a list of Christmasy words that your guests will likely say throughout the event. Type out these words, and print them on index-card-sized sheets of cardstock. When guests arrive, give them each four clothespins, attaching them to their clothing somewhere, along with copies of your list. Tell each guest that if he hears another guest utter one of the words on the list, he can take one of her clothespins. Inform guests that whoever has the most clothespins at night’s end will win the competition and get a prize.
Encourage guests to get to know each other better with a gift-list bingo game. When you prepare your event RSVP cards, ask each guest to write down what she most hopes to receives for Christmas. Create a bingo card with these hoped-for gifts filling the boxes. Give each guest one of these cards at the door. Tell guests that, as they mix and mingle, they should seek to find out who is hoping for each gift listed on the card and, when they discover the information, fill in the hopeful gift-recipient’s name in the appropriate box. For example, if Sarah finds out that Aunt Suzie is the one who wants a new pair of knitting needles, she would write Aunt Suzie’s name in the box that contains knitting needles. The guest who creates a row of five filled-in boxes first wins a special prize.
Tree of Trivia
Get guests’ brains in gear with a tree of trivia. Create a Christmas tree cutout, using a large sheet of green paper, or use a petite artificial tree as a 3-D trivia tree. Create colorful circles out of card stock, numbering each and writing a trivia question on it. Place these circles on your tree. When guests arrive, give them each a numbered sheet and direct them to the tree. Ask them to look over the ornaments and answer as many of the trivia questions as possible before returning the numbered sheet to you. As your party draws to a near, review the papers and reward a prize to the individual who got the most answers correct.