PULTEVENT
Twelve days of Christmas party: 8 games built around the carol and Twelfth Night
A pub function room in Bath, the fifth of January. The decorations are still up because, as the landlady told me firmly, they come down tomorrow and not a day before. Thirty people in their coats-off second hour. On the screen behind me, a partridge sits in a pear tree, and underneath it a question: counting every gift in every verse, how many does the true love give in total? A man at the back says "seventy-eight" with great confidence. His wife says "three hundred and something." She is closer.
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The twelve days of Christmas are the stretch from Christmas Day to the eve of Epiphany, and for most people they vanish into leftovers and returning presents. A party built on them gives the season a proper ending, or, if you run it in December, a theme with a lot more to play with than tinsel. There is the carol with its absurd pile of birds, the old Twelfth Night customs, and cakes with a bean hidden inside that crowned a king for the night.
I run these on PULTEVENT. The laptop holds the host console in its browser, the projector or TV shows each round, and the guests answer, vote and play on their own phones after scanning the QR code on screen, with no app and no sign-up. Guests' phones need internet. Everything else comes from the room.
8 twelve-days games, from the gift count to the Twelfth Night crown
1 The gift count quiz
A quiz answered from phones about the carol and the season. How many gifts in total if you count every verse (364). What the "calling birds" were in early versions (colly birds, an old word for blackbirds). Which day brings the lords a-leaping (the tenth).
How to run it. Put the first question on screen while people are still getting drinks. The 364 answer always starts an argument, so let it.
It sets the theme in two minutes, and everyone knows the carol well enough to have an opinion.
2 Put the season in order
Cards with the days between Christmas and Epiphany: St Stephen's Day, Holy Innocents, Hogmanay, New Year's Day, Twelfth Night, Epiphany. Players drag them into date order on their phones.
How to run it. For the second round, use customs instead of dates: wassailing the apple trees, taking the decorations down, the three kings arriving.
Most people know Christmas and New Year and very little in between. It is a gentle education disguised as a game.
3 Charades of the twelve gifts
The laptop shows a gift to the actor: swans a-swimming, maids a-milking, geese a-laying, pipers piping. Their team guesses against the clock on the big screen.
How to run it. Once the twelve gifts run out, move on to Christmas-season objects: a cracker, a sprout, a paper crown.
Watching a finance director be a goose a-laying is worth the price of the room.
4 Twelve tables, twelve verses
The guest wheel gives each table or team a day number. At the singalong, each table stands up only for its own gift, and the rest of the room judges by live vote which table sang its line best.
How to run it. Show the words on screen. Warn the table with five gold rings that they will be singing it eleven times.
A cumulative carol is the best group singing format ever invented, and splitting it by table makes it a contest.
5 Leaping lords dance battle
Two volunteers from different teams, thirty seconds of music each, and the room votes from their phones. Then two more. The theme is the tenth day, so leaping is encouraged.
How to run it. Pick the first pair from people who are already dancing near the bar. Never drag anyone up who has said no.
It breaks the room out of sitting down, which by the second hour it badly needs.
6 Twelve gifts by QR raffle
Everyone enters the raffle by scanning a code. You draw twelve winners, one for each day, and the name comes up on the screen with the matching gift picture.
How to run it. Keep the prizes small and silly and match them to the carol: a chocolate coin for the gold rings, a pear for the partridge, a rubber duck for the swans.
Twelve winners means a lot of the room goes home with something, and the pear always gets the biggest cheer.
7 Wassail round: true or false
Statements about old Christmas-season customs, answered true or false on phones. In parts of the West Country, people wassail apple orchards around Twelfth Night to wake the trees for a good harvest: true.
How to run it. Add customs from other countries: the Italian Befana, the French galette des rois, Three Kings parades in Spain.
A calmer round after the dancing, and the guests who read the history books get their moment.
8 The bean king's decrees
A cake with a dried bean hidden inside is shared out, as it was on English Twelfth Nights. Whoever finds the bean is crowned king or queen for the night and spins a task randomizer on screen to issue royal decrees.
How to run it. Write the decrees yourself: everyone at table three must toast in rhyme, the host must sing the next verse alone. Warn guests about the bean before they bite.
It hands the room to a guest for ten minutes, which is exactly what Twelfth Night was for.
Twelve rounds, or eight
Build one small game for each day, or pick the strongest few. The theme stretches either way.
Questions you can check
The quiz sticks to traditions, history and food, with answers that hold up when someone looks them up.
Twelve prizes, drawn fairly
Guests enter a QR raffle from their phones and you draw one prize for each day.
A king for the night
The old Twelfth Night crown gets a modern twist: the winner draws decrees from a randomizer on screen.
When to hold it
Traditionally the twelve days run from Christmas Day, with Twelfth Night on the evening of the fifth of January in many English-speaking traditions, and Epiphany on the sixth. A party on the fifth is the authentic choice, and it has a practical advantage: nobody else is throwing one, and everyone has recovered from New Year.
A December party works just as well. Use the twelve days as your theme, rather than your date.
"Isn't it a bit late for Christmas?"
"It is still Christmas until tomorrow."
A few facts for your quiz
The carol appeared in print in England in 1780 in a children's book, as a memory-and-forfeits game where anyone who got a verse wrong paid a forfeit. That makes it a party game from the start. Counting every gift in every verse gives 364 in total.
The old Twelfth Night cake hid a bean, and whoever found it ruled the evening. France still does something similar in January with the galette des rois and its hidden charm, the fève, and in Spain and Mexico there is the ring-shaped roscón or rosca de reyes. In Britain, a long-standing superstition says decorations should come down by Twelfth Night.
Check anything you add yourself before the night. A quiz answer that turns out to be wrong is the only thing guests will remember.
The office version: twelve days, twelve small rounds
Many workplaces run a twelve-days countdown over the last two weeks and a bit before the holidays. Each working day, the team gets one small thing: a five-minute quiz at the morning stand-up, a photo guessing round, a vote on the best desk decoration, a raffle draw on the Friday.
With a screen in the kitchen or a shared link in the team call, it takes you ten minutes a day to run. The office party then closes the series with the awards and the scoreboard across all twelve days. Remote colleagues join by scanning the QR code from the shared screen in the video call.
What you need
A laptop with a browser, a projector or TV with an HDMI input, and phones that can get online. Pub and hall Wi-Fi varies a lot, so test it a day or two ahead from the actual room, not the car park.
The host console is available in English, and each guest's phone follows its own language. The ready-made quiz decks are mostly in Russian for now, so write your twelve-days questions in the quiz builder. It takes an evening, and you can use the facts above as a start.
Trying it before the party
Start the free 3-day demo when you have your questions ready. No card needed. Build the quiz, load the twelve gift pictures for the raffle and run a round with a friend on the other end of a phone. After that the full version is a one-time licence, no subscription, and 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 run a twelve days of Christmas party with games on screen
- 1
Choose your date: the fifth of January for Twelfth Night, or any December evening as a theme.
- 2
Write the gift count quiz, the season timeline and the true-or-false round, checking every answer.
- 3
Buy twelve small prizes to match the carol and set up the QR raffle.
- 4
Bake or buy a cake, hide a dried bean in it and write the king's decrees for the randomizer.
- 5
At the venue, connect the laptop to the screen and test the Wi-Fi from a phone.
- 6
Run the quiz and timeline first, then charades, the singalong, dancing, the raffle and the bean king.
FAQ
When are the twelve days of Christmas?
How many gifts are there in the carol in total?
Is there a ready-made twelve days quiz?
Can we run a twelve-day countdown at work?
Do guests need an app?
How much does it cost?
See also
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