PULTEVENT
Christmas charades ideas: 7 word lists for kids, families and adults
Boxing Day, a terraced house in Bristol, the living room carpet still covered in wrapping paper. A seven-year-old in a paper crown is standing in front of the TV, arms stretched out wide, spinning slowly, then stopping to bow very seriously to her grandad. The clock on the screen is at forty seconds. Her aunt guesses "windmill". Her uncle guesses "ballerina". Grandad, who hasn't said a word all game, puts down his tea and says, "She's the star on top of the tree." She is. He is unbearable for the rest of the afternoon.
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Charades is the oldest game at a family Christmas and still the one that works best with a mixed room, because a four-year-old and an eighty-year-old can play it together with no rules to explain. The part that trips people up is the words. Somebody writes them on scraps of paper in a hurry, half are too hard for the kids, the other half are too easy for the adults, and one is a film nobody under forty has seen.
So here are seven word lists sorted by age and difficulty, all about Christmas and winter, none of them titles. Copy them, cut them down, add your own. At the end there's a short guide to running charades on the TV, with the words kept on a laptop, a timer the whole room can see and a scoreboard that stops the arguments.
7 Christmas charades lists, from easiest to hardest
1 For the littlest ones (ages 3 to 6)
Building a snowman. Eating a mince pie. Opening a present. A reindeer. Ringing a bell. Throwing a snowball. Sleeping on Christmas Eve. A penguin. Hanging up a stocking. Brushing snow off a car. Blowing out a candle. A jumping elf.
How to run it. Whisper the word in the child's ear instead of showing it, and let a grown-up act with them if they freeze.
Small children love being the one everyone is looking at. Let them win at least once.
2 Characters and things (ages 7 to 12)
A nutcracker soldier. An angel. A shepherd with a lamb. Santa stuck in a chimney. A snow globe being shaken. A robin. A toy train. A gingerbread man running away. An ice skater. A sleigh. A candy cane. A Christmas cracker being pulled.
How to run it. Allow sounds for this age group. A reindeer without the grunting is barely a reindeer.
Old enough to be clever about it, young enough to throw themselves at it. This is usually the loudest round.
3 Christmas Day at home (all ages)
Carving the turkey. Untangling the lights. Burning the roast potatoes. Wearing a paper crown. Falling asleep after lunch. Reading the joke from a cracker. Washing up a mountain of plates. Hiding the last chocolate. Setting the pudding on fire. Taking a family photo that nobody is ready for.
How to run it. Put this list on when the whole family is playing. Everyone has lived every one of these moments.
The laughter comes from recognition. Someone always acts out exactly what happened in this very house two hours ago.
4 Winter outdoors
Sledging down a hill. Ice fishing. Slipping on ice. Skiing downhill. A snowball fight. Carol singing door to door. Scraping a frozen windscreen. Making snow angels. Walking a dog in the snow. Chopping firewood. A polar bear swim.
How to run it. Push the coffee table back first. These words need room.
Gives the people who've eaten too much a reason to move around, and it's funny to watch in a small living room.
5 For grown-ups: holiday chaos
Assembling a toy at two in the morning. Pretending to love a present. Re-gifting. Hunting for the sticky tape. Queueing at the post office. Trying on a sweater from your mother-in-law. The office party the morning after. Returning a present without a receipt. Sneaking a drink in the kitchen. The last-minute shop on Christmas Eve.
How to run it. Save this list until the youngest kids have gone to bed or to another room. Most words are fine for them, but the jokes land better without an explanation.
Every adult in the room has done at least three of these this week. They guess fast and laugh louder.
6 Customs from around the world
Leaving shoes out for Saint Nicholas (the Netherlands and Germany). Eating twelve grapes at midnight (Spain). Spinning a dreidel (Hanukkah). Lighting the menorah, one more candle each night (Hanukkah). Hiding the brooms on Christmas Eve (Norway). Keeping a live carp in the bathtub (Czech Republic). Leaving a carrot for the reindeer (Britain). A Boxing Day dip in the cold sea (Britain and Ireland).
How to run it. Show the country with the word so the actor has a hint to work with. After each round, say one sentence about the custom.
A mixed-heritage family or a room of expats will know some of these better than you, and that's the point.
7 The expert round: abstract words
Tradition. Leftovers. Wishlist. Jet lag. Midnight. Advent. Forgiveness. Peace and quiet. Surprise. Homesick. Countdown to New Year.
How to run it. Allow the actor to break the word into syllables. Otherwise you'll be there until Easter.
The finale. Watching someone act out "forgiveness" in sixty seconds is some of the best theatre a family Christmas can offer.
Seven lists, sorted by age
From words a toddler can act to customs from other countries that will stump the adults.
No titles to argue about
Only actions, characters, objects and traditions. Everyone knows them, whatever they watch.
A clock the room can see
On the TV, the countdown is visible to everyone, so nobody can claim they had longer.
Scores that stay put
The team scoreboard remembers the points, even after the second helping of pudding.
The rules, in one breath
Split the room into two or three teams. One person acts, with no words and no sounds (except for the kids' round). Their own team guesses. Sixty seconds per word, a point for every correct guess, and the team with most points at the end wins the tin of chocolates everyone is already eating.
The usual signs help: fingers on the forearm for the number of words, a tug of the earlobe for "sounds like", a chopping motion for syllables. Explain them once at the start and don't be strict about them.
Playing on the TV
Charades works fine with bits of paper in a bowl. It works better on a screen. With PULTEVENT on a laptop plugged into the TV, you load your own word list into the charades section, keep the words on the laptop where only you and the actor can see them, and let the countdown run where everyone can see it. The team scoreboard keeps the points, so nobody has to scribble on the back of a napkin, and at the end there's a podium with confetti.
To pick the next actor, spin the guest wheel on the screen. For a twist, run the task randomizer before a word: act it in slow motion, act it with no hands, act it with a partner. Nobody needs a phone to act, and if you want everyone playing from their own phones for other games that evening, they scan a QR code, no app, and need internet.
Making teams that are fair
Never put all the kids on one team and all the adults on another, unless you enjoy tears. Mix the ages: a grandparent, a parent, a teenager and a small child on each side. The small ones act the easy words, the teenagers act the hard ones, and the grandparents turn out to be the best guessers every single time.
"Why is Nana so good at this?"
"She's been playing since before television."
Writing your own words
A good charades word is something you can see. Actions beat nouns, and nouns you can hold beat ideas. "Wrapping a present" is easy to act, "generosity" is not. Aim for about twenty words per team for a half-hour game, and put the easy ones first so everyone gets a win early.
Add a few words that belong to your family only. The dog stealing the sausages last year. Dad falling asleep during the speech. Nobody else's charades list has them, and they get the biggest laugh of the day.
When to play
Charades is an after-lunch game. On Christmas Day that means the slump around four, when half the room is asleep and the other half is looking at their phones. It's a physical game, so it wakes people up. Twenty to thirty minutes is enough. Stop while people still want another round.
If some of the family is far away
Relatives in another country can play too. Start a video call on the laptop and share the stage window, so they see the clock and the scores. They can guess by shouting down the call, and when it's their turn to act, the laptop camera becomes the stage. The time delay makes it harder, which the family on the sofa will pretend not to enjoy.
Trying it out
The free 3-day demo doesn't ask for a card and is plenty to load these lists, try the wheel and play a few rounds. If you want to keep it for New Year, birthdays and every family gathering after that, the full version is a one-time licence, no subscription. The price is on pultevent.ru/en.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who has hosted weddings, birthdays and office parties since 2014: over 500 events, best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He made it for his own nights first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to play Christmas charades on the TV
- 1
Choose two or three lists from this page to match the ages in the room.
- 2
Load the words into the charades section and set the timer to sixty seconds.
- 3
Connect the laptop to the TV and split the family into mixed-age teams.
- 4
Spin the guest wheel to pick the first actor and let them read the word on the laptop, out of the room's sight.
- 5
Let the team guess while the clock runs on the screen, and add the points to the scoreboard.
- 6
Finish with the expert round and show the podium for the winning team.
FAQ
Do players need phones for charades?
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