Christmas Charades: Ideas for Kids, Movies and Songs

Christmas charades works best when the words match the people acting them. A four-year-old can act out “building a snowman” in seconds. The same child will freeze on “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and a room of adults will be bored by “candy cane” by the third round. So the lists below are sorted by who is playing, from one-step actions for preschoolers to movie titles, songs and party situations for teens and adults.

Copy the list for your group onto paper slips, fold them, and drop them in a bowl. If you need the basic rules or ideas for kids who can’t read yet, they’re in our guide to charades for kids. This page is the word supply.

Pick a Christmas charades list for your group

Start with the row that describes your guests. For a mixed group, use two bowls (the setup is further down).

Who’s playing	Ages	Lists to use	Group size	Suggested turn
Preschoolers with a grown-up	3 to 5	Easy actions, characters and animals	2 to 8, everyone guesses together	No timer
School-age kids	6 to 10	Things and decorations, food, Christmas morning	4 to 12, two teams	1 minute
Teens and adults	11 and up	Movies, songs, characters, hard phrases	6 or more, two teams	1 minute
Family with young kids	3 to adult	Two bowls: easy actions plus one adult list	6 to 20	Kids untimed
Office party	Adults	Office list plus songs	8 or more, two teams	1 minute

The group sizes and turn lengths are our suggestions for keeping everyone involved. A game of 20 to 30 slips usually fills a stretch between dinner and dessert; stop when the bowl is empty or when the youngest players start drifting off.

Easy Christmas charades for preschoolers

Little kids do best with one clear action they’ve seen or done. A grown-up whispers the slip into the actor’s ear, so nobody needs to read.

Christmas actions (21)

• Building a snowman
• Making a snow angel
• Throwing a snowball
• Opening a present
• Wrapping a present
• Hanging a stocking
• Decorating the tree
• Putting the star on top of the tree
• Eating a candy cane
• Drinking hot cocoa
• Eating a Christmas cookie
• Ringing a bell
• Ice skating
• Sledding down a hill
• Putting on mittens
• Shoveling snow
• Catching snowflakes on your tongue
• Caroling at a front door
• Sleeping on Christmas Eve
• Waving to Santa
• Leaving cookies out for Santa

Christmas characters and animals (15)

• Santa
• Rudolph
• A reindeer
• An elf
• A snowman
• A penguin
• A polar bear
• A gingerbread man
• A toy soldier
• An angel
• Mrs. Claus
• A jack-in-the-box
• A teddy bear
• A rocking horse
• A ballerina

Picture cards that already work as charades

Our Christmas Left Right Gift Pass Game comes with 20 Santa Says cards, printed four to a page across five pages. Each card has a picture above a short action, so a child who can’t read can still see what to act.

Fifteen of the 20 can go straight into a charades bowl. Before you start, set aside card 01 (touch your nose), 03 (make your best Santa laugh), 08 (do a Christmas dance), 10 (say Ho Ho Ho) and 20 (a big Christmas smile). Two of those are sounds, and the other three are too general for anyone to guess.

Watch for three cards that look alike once a child acts them: 02 (ride a reindeer), 09 (fly Santa’s sleigh) and 19 (pull Santa’s sleigh). Most guessers will shout “sleigh” or “reindeer” for all three. Keep one of them per round, or accept either word as a correct guess so nobody ends a turn in tears.

Christmas charades for kids 6 to 10

Children this age can read a slip, play in teams and handle a one-minute timer. The prompts can be objects and small scenes instead of single actions.

Christmas things and decorations (20)

• Christmas tree
• Stocking
• Wreath
• Candy cane
• Ornament
• Christmas lights
• Chimney
• Sleigh
• Snow globe
• Mistletoe
• Advent calendar
• Fireplace
• Christmas card
• Gingerbread house
• Jingle bells
• Nutcracker
• Tinsel
• Wrapping paper
• A bow on a present
• Christmas sweater

Christmas food (15)

• Hot chocolate with marshmallows
• Gingerbread cookies
• Christmas ham
• Roast turkey
• Eggnog
• Fruitcake
• Mashed potatoes
• Pie
• Popcorn garland
• Milk and cookies
• Peppermint bark
• Roasted chestnuts
• Cranberry sauce
• Sugar cookies with sprinkles
• Gravy

Christmas morning and winter fun (15)

• Building a snow fort
• Having a snowball fight
• Writing a letter to Santa
• Waiting up for Santa
• Shaking a present to guess what’s inside
• Hearing sleigh bells
• Being in the school Christmas play
• Getting a sweater you don’t like
• Waking up your parents on Christmas morning
• Finding the biggest present
• Feeding carrots to the reindeer
• Slipping on ice
• Wearing an itchy sweater
• Baking cookies
• Tearing open wrapping paper

Food and things are harder to act than actions, which is the point at this age. A child has to show how you use a snow globe (shake it, stare into it) instead of being one. If a team gets stuck on the same slip for the whole minute, let the actor give one “sounds like” signal or move on to the next slip.

Christmas movie charades

Movie titles are the classic adult round, because everyone knows the signal for “movie” and the title can be acted word by word.

Family Christmas movies and TV specials (16)

• Home Alone
• Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
• Elf
• The Polar Express
• A Christmas Story
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• The Santa Clause
• Frosty the Snowman
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• A Charlie Brown Christmas
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• The Muppet Christmas Carol
• Jingle All the Way
• Arthur Christmas
• Klaus
• The Year Without a Santa Claus

Christmas movies for a grown-up round (9)

• It’s a Wonderful Life
• Miracle on 34th Street
• White Christmas
• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
• The Holiday
• Scrooged
• Fred Claus
• Four Christmases
• Christmas with the Kranks

The movie list has a trap: the oldest titles are the hardest to guess. Teenagers may know the name “It’s a Wonderful Life” without ever having seen it, so they can’t use a famous scene as a clue. Before the round, ask whether everyone in the group knows each film, and drop the ones nobody under 30 has watched.

Christmas song charades (25)

• Jingle Bells
• Silent Night
• Deck the Halls
• Joy to the World
• We Wish You a Merry Christmas
• Here Comes Santa Claus
• Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
• Jingle Bell Rock
• Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
• Let It Snow
• Winter Wonderland
• Sleigh Ride
• The Twelve Days of Christmas
• O Christmas Tree
• Away in a Manger
• The Little Drummer Boy
• I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
• All I Want for Christmas Is You
• Blue Christmas
• Feliz Navidad
• Up on the Housetop
• Do You Hear What I Hear?
• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
• Silver Bells
• It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Decide before the first song whether the actor may hum. If humming is allowed, the round turns into a guess-the-tune game, and “Jingle Bells” lasts about two seconds. Silent acting makes “Silent Night” one of the best slips on the list, since the actor can mime “shh” and then the night sky.

Two song titles are also TV specials: “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” If both lists go into the same bowl, the actor will signal “song” and the guessers will argue that it’s a movie. Put each title in one bowl only.

Hard Christmas charades for teens and adults

These prompts need a whole scene or a phrase, and they get the most laughs from a group that knows each other.

Christmas characters (12)

• Ebenezer Scrooge
• Tiny Tim
• The Ghost of Christmas Past
• The Grinch
• Cindy Lou Who
• Buddy the Elf
• Kevin McCallister
• Ralphie and his BB gun
• Jack Skellington
• Clarence the angel
• Hermey the elf who wants to be a dentist
• Max, the Grinch’s dog

Christmas phrases and situations (20)

• Untangling the Christmas lights
• Burning the Christmas cookies
• Regifting a present
• Pretending to love an ugly sweater
• Putting together a toy at midnight (spoiler)
• Waiting in line to see Santa at the mall
• Fighting over a parking spot at the mall
• Wrapping a present with too little paper
• The dog knocking over the tree
• Kissing under the mistletoe
• Black Friday shopping
• Mailing Christmas cards on December 23
• Christmas morning bed hair
• Getting tinsel stuck everywhere
• Hiding presents in the closet (spoiler)
• Eating the cookies left out for Santa (spoiler)
• Carving the ham
• Finding a pine needle in your sock in July
• Falling asleep during the family movie
• Opening the wrong person’s present

The three slips marked “spoiler” give away who really does Santa’s job. Take them out if any child in the room still believes. The same goes for any slip you add yourself about filling stockings or eating Santa’s snack.

Office party Christmas charades (10)

• The Secret Santa reveal
• Judging the ugly sweater contest
• Wearing a Santa hat on a video call
• Setting your out-of-office message
• Taking the last cookie in the break room
• Decorating your desk
• Posing in the holiday photo booth
• Giving a toast at the party
• A gift card wrapped in a giant box
• Pretending to like the white elephant gift

Keep office slips about the party itself and not about coworkers. A slip that pokes fun at one person’s habit is funny in a family, but it singles out a person in front of their team.

Mixing ages in one Christmas charades game

Families and class parties often have a five-year-old and a grandparent on the same team. Two bowls fix most of the trouble. Fill one bowl with easy actions and characters, and fill the other with movies, songs or phrases. Each player draws from the bowl that fits them, and both slips score the same.

A few house rules keep a mixed game fair:

• Pair the youngest players. A child under six acts with an older partner who whispered the slip and can help with the moves.
• No timer for little kids. A countdown can make a small child freeze mid-act. Let them finish.
• Let anyone pass once. A teen who has never seen “White Christmas” can swap the slip instead of standing there.
• Agree on “close enough” before you start. For young actors, “snowman” can count for “building a snowman.”

The Christmas Challenge cards in the same game are mostly naming tasks, like “Name 3 Christmas foods,” and three of the 20 are act-it-out cards (09, 10 and 14). Those three fit the easy bowl. The bonus game guide allows about 20 seconds per challenge card and lets a player ask the group for help or skip any card, which works well for a shy child in a family game.

The game ends when the bowl is empty. With teams, the team with more correct guesses wins. With preschoolers, skip the score and stop when every child has had two turns.

When some guests won’t act

Some people would rather guess all night than stand up in front of the room. Make guessing their job, or give them another game at the same table. Draw-and-guess uses the same slips with a pen and a pad instead of acting, and our page of Christmas games for kids has quieter games for a class party.

Our Christmas Would You Rather Cards suit a guest who wants to join in without acting. Each card asks a question with two choices, A and B, and everyone answers from their seat.