Best Christmas Drinking Games

Christmas is the one time of year when a drinking game has to work for an odd mix of people: old friends home for the week, a cousin you see once a year, whoever got roped into the after-dinner clean-up. The games on this list are the ones that survive that room. Most need nothing but a drink, a few need a deck of cards or a TV, and each one is explained in a paragraph. They are grouped loosely: movie games first, then the party drinking games built around the holiday itself, then the calmer ones for the table after dinner.

Elf drinking game

Elf is the best Christmas movie for a drinking game because Buddy does the same three things over and over: shouts about Santa, eats sugar, and gets hurt. The rules below are the common set, pulled from the versions people actually play. Pick four or five, not all of them, unless you are planning to leave at the halfway point.

• Drink when Buddy says “Santa”
• Drink when Buddy eats something with sugar in it (syrup on spaghetti counts once, not per strand)
• Drink when Buddy screams or gets hurt
• Drink when anyone sings
• Drink twice when Buddy eats something that is not food (the gum, the cotton balls)
• Everyone drinks when Peter Dinklage is called an angry elf
• Waterfall when Buddy drinks the whole bottle of Coke, and again during the snowball fight
• Finish your drink when Walter opens the gift addressed to “that special someone”

Home Alone drinking game

Home Alone is slower to start than Elf and then makes up for it in the last half hour, when every trap is a drink. The version below stays playable through the whole film. If you are doing the second one, the same rules apply and there are more pigeons.

• Drink when Kevin talks to himself or to the camera
• Drink when someone says “Kevin” in an exasperated voice
• Drink when Old Man Marley appears
• Drink when Uncle Frank is cheap
• Drink when Harry’s gold tooth shows
• Drink every time a trap hits Harry or Marv, double if Marv screams
• Drink when the “Angels with Filthy Souls” gangster fires the Tommy gun
• Finish your drink when Kevin says “Keep the change, ya filthy animal”

Santa hat on the TV

The easiest game on this list, and the one to run in the background while people arrive. Put a Santa hat on one top corner of the TV and play any Christmas film. Whenever a character’s head lines up with the hat so they look like they are wearing it, everyone drinks. Works with the news, sport, and a family video call, which is where it is funniest.

• Hang the hat on the top corner of the screen so the brim sits in the picture
• Anyone on screen who appears to wear the hat is a drink for everyone
• If you call it first, you choose one person to drink instead
• Swap corners at the halfway point to keep it fair

Christmas Kings Cup

Kings Cup with the cards reskinned for the holiday. Setup is the standard one: a big cup in the middle, the deck spread face down in a ring around it, draw a card and do what it says. The holiday meanings below replace the usual ones; anything not listed keeps its normal rule. Fill the cup with whatever people are drinking, or eggnog if the table is brave.

• Ace: Waterfall, everyone drinks and stops in order around the circle
• 4: Floor, last to touch the floor drinks (or last to touch the tree)
• 5: Santa is coming, all the men drink
• 6: Mrs. Claus is here, all the women drink
• 7: Heaven, last to point at the star on top of the tree drinks
• 8: Elf, pick a helper who drinks whenever you drink for the rest of the game
• 9: Rhyme, but the starting word has to be a Christmas word
• 10: Categories, Christmas only (carols, reindeer, things in a stocking)
• Jack: Reindeer, everyone makes antlers with their hands and the last one is Rudolph, who drinks whenever someone sings the first line of his song
• Queen: “Were you good this year?”, the Queen holder asks questions and anyone who answers drinks
• King: Make a rule and pour into the cup; the fourth King drinks it

Christmas carol relay

The carol game shows up on every list under a different name (Jingle Shots, Christmas Choir, Carols on Booze), and the rules are the same everywhere. Sit in a circle. Someone sings the first line of a carol, the next person sings the next line, and it goes round until someone forgets the words, hesitates, or sings the wrong verse. Best with a group that thinks it knows the words to “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and is wrong.

• The youngest player starts with the first line of any carol
• Each player in turn sings the next line
• Whoever forgets, stalls, or mangles the line drinks
• That player starts a new carol, and no carol can be repeated
• If the group finishes a whole song, everyone drinks to celebrate

The Mariah Carey rule

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” will play at least four times at any party between now and New Year, so attach a rule to it. The simple version is a drink on the big opening note and a drink every time Mariah sings the word “you”. The party version, which older lists call the Mariah game, turns the song into wishes between players.

• Whenever the song plays, everyone drinks on the opening note and on every “you”
• Wish version: a player sings “all I want for Christmas is…” followed by a wish for someone else in the room (a dance, a dare, a kiss under the mistletoe)
• The named person either grants the wish or drinks
• If the wish is granted, the singer drinks instead, because they asked for it
• Singing the wish in Mariah’s range is encouraged and not required

Secret Santa swap

This is the gift exchange (White Elephant, Yankee Swap, Dirty Santa, whatever your family calls it) with a drinking rule attached to every move. Everyone brings a wrapped gift under a set budget, the gifts go in a pile, and players draw numbers for turn order. The drinking rules are ours and they are labeled as such; the swap itself is the one you already know.

• Player 1 opens any gift from the pile
• Each following player either opens a new gift or steals an opened one
• If your gift is stolen, you drink, then pick or steal again
• A gift can only be stolen twice, and the third owner keeps it (and drinks once in celebration)
• Whoever ends the game with the worst gift, by vote, finishes their drink
• Unwrap with one hand if the group wants it to take longer

Ugly sweater judging

If the party has an ugly sweater theme there is already a contest happening, so give it rules. Everyone in a sweater is a contestant; everyone not in one is a judge and drinks for showing up underdressed. Run it as a quick show, one sweater at a time, with drink rules for the crowd. These are house rules, since the sweater contest has no official ones.

• Each contestant gets thirty seconds to present their sweater and its features
• Drink if the sweater has lights, drink twice if they work
• Drink if the sweater makes a sound
• Drink if you are wearing a sweater bought for this party, not inherited
• Judges vote by pointing; the winner hands out five drinks, the loser takes three

Wrapping race

A relay for when people are standing up and talkative. Two teams, a pile of objects to wrap, paper, tape, and scissors per team. The objects should be awkward (a bottle, a shoe, a spoon, a ball) so the wrapping is bad and the race is close. The losing team drinks; the winning team judges the wrapping and hands out extra drinks for anything that falls open.

• Split into two teams with equal piles of objects
• One at a time, each player wraps one object and tags the next
• First team to have every object wrapped wins; the losers drink
• Round two: unwrap the other team’s pile using only one hand, or no hands
• Any wrapping that falls apart before judging is a drink for the wrapper

I decorate my Christmas tree

A memory game for the table after dinner, and the one the grandparents will win. Each player repeats the growing list of decorations and adds one. Whoever breaks the chain drinks. It sounds tame and it becomes hard at about twelve items, which is also about when people start adding things that are not decorations.

• The first player says “I decorate my Christmas tree and hang on it: a star”
• The next player repeats the sentence, the list so far, and adds an item
• Continue around the circle, keeping the items in the right order
• Forget an item, swap the order, or stall, and you drink
• The player who broke the chain restarts with a new first item

Christmas Most Likely To

Most Likely To with holiday questions. Someone reads a prompt, everyone points at the person it describes on the count of three, and whoever gets the most fingers drinks. It needs no setup, works for two or twenty, and it is the game that gets the quietest person at the table talked about. Write ten prompts on your phone before people arrive.

• Most likely to re-gift something from last year
• Most likely to cry at a Christmas advert
• Most likely to start a fight over the board game
• Most likely to be asleep before the Queen’s speech (or the football)
• Most likely to eat a whole tin of chocolates alone
• Most likely to still be wrapping gifts on the morning of the 25th

How to pick one

Match the game to the room, not the other way round. A movie night with two to five people wants Elf or Home Alone with the Santa hat running on top. A full house with people standing and talking wants the wrapping race or the Mariah rule, because both can be joined halfway through. A table after dinner wants the tree memory game, the carol relay, or Most Likely To, which sit down and go slowly. Save Christmas Kings Cup for a group that came to play, and for after the relatives have gone to bed.

If the group wants a physical game, Flip Cup needs no holiday changes beyond naming the teams Elves and Reindeer, and Beer Pong works the same on the 25th as on any other night.

Tips

• Keep the drinks small. The movie games in particular trigger every couple of minutes, and a film is two hours long. Sips, not shots, and a rule that anyone can tap out of a round without explaining.
• Let non-drinkers play with whatever is in their glass. Every game above says who drinks, not what, and a table with mixed cups works fine.
• Put water and food within reach. Christmas drinking games happen after a big meal or instead of one, and the second case is where the evening goes wrong.
• Pick the rules before the movie starts, and cap them at five. Arguing about whether a mince pie counts as sugar is a worse way to spend the film than drinking for it.