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MINCE-PIE CAROL-OFF
In the bleak mince-winter…
10 mins
Like the evil offspring of Chubby Bunnies and The Cracker Game, this game combines talking with your mouth full and consuming dry (ish) foods as quickly as possible. You will need as many mince pies as your budget can stretch to. Divide your group into teams of about six. For each round, each team has to nominate one team member to consume a mince pie as quickly as possible, and then recite (or sing or whistle – dependent on the flakiness of your mince pies, and the musicality of your group) a verse of a Christmas carol of your choosing. The first person to successfully and clearly do this, without spraying you in half-chewed mincemeat, wins a point for their team. Keep going until you run out of Christmas carols (as if), mince pies (more likely), or patience with the fine mist of crumbs and raisins that now decorate your meeting space (definitely).
If you want to make the game more active, place the mince pies on a plate at the other end of the room to the teams, and make the competitors come to you or another leader elsewhere to sing their Christmas carol.
If this game was a Christmas gift it would be: A £1 postal order from your 110 year-old great-aunt – no one is quite sure what you do with it, but it’s the thought that counts.
SPROUT-BOWLING
Throw sprouts away in order to win chocolate: it’s a Christmas miracle!
10 mins
This is a small-scale game, but an engrossing one, crammed chock full of the main features of Christmas – sprouts and chocolate. (Jesus also plays a key role in Christmas, but his role in this game is much lower key.)
For this game, you will need: a long table, a supply of raw unprepared sprouts and plenty of those hollow chocolate Santas that you can hang on Christmas trees. At one end of the table, arrange the Santas to stand as closely as possible in ten-pin bowling skittle formation, and gather your players at the other end of the table. Explain that you are going bowling, and that their task is to roll a sprout along the table top to knock over as many Santas as possible.
One at a time, get them to stand behind the end of the table and attempt to roll a sprout along the surface of the table (no throwing!) and knock over the chocolate pins. If you have a larger group, play this as a team game, adding together the total number of Santas knocked over by the players of each team. If the group is smaller, you could play it as a head-to-head competition.
If you are feeling generous allow your players to consume any chocolates they successfully bowl over. Alternatively, you could provide a forfeit (a cooked sprout?) for any players who fail to bowl any Santas over.
If this game was a Christmas gift it would be: A Christmas jumper – really not much use at any other time of year.
MUSICAL STATUES
A game to make you feel Christmassy and nostalgic, like the smell of turkey, the feel of wrapping paper or existential despair.
15 mins
A game only tangentially linked with Christmas - being a party , this old chestnut is one that your group may well have played when they were younger. However, with a healthy dollop of teenage irony, this becomes a simple and really enjoyable game for them to play. The idea is really basic: while the music plays they dance, and when the music stops they have to freeze and hold the position until the music restarts. Anyone seen moving after the music stops is eliminated, and so on, until there is just one winner. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to either play your own favourite music (90’s indie) or to demonstrate your youth worker credentials, by playing some of the beat combos popular in the current Hit Parade (I hear a bunch of young whippersnappers called the Rolling Stones are going to be big). Alternatively, just put on a playlist composed entirely of One Direction, the Frozen soundtrack and Christmas music and you’ll have a ‘wonderful’ time.
If this game was a Christmas gift it would be: A board game – it might seem a bit old-fashioned at first, but after a while everyone is playing and loving it.
MARSHMALLOW SNOWMEN
Please don’t get confused – not all snow is marshmallow, especially yellow snow.
20 mins
Given the slim possibility of a decent snowfall before Christmas (unless you mainly do youth work in Switzerland / Alaska / Victorian Christmas cards) the idea of making a snowman for Christmas may have always been just a dream. Well any budding Raymond Brigges out there can begin to get excited, because here’s a way of making that into a reality.
Divide your group into small teams of four or five, and give each team a pot of toothpicks and a big bag of white marshmallows (the big fluffy kind). Explain that their task is to use these things to construct the biggest and best snowman that they can. Allow 15 minutes for the construction, and be prepared to help with some guidance. If possible find some ‘food pens’ (that can draw on food and still leave it edible) to allow the groups to draw faces / buttons / noses etc onto the ‘snowmen’.
Once your time limit is up, judge the various efforts, before consuming any marshmallows that either remain unused, or that are in a suitable condition for eating! You could make a load of hot chocolate while they are doing this, and let them add their own marshmallows at the end. Of course if it snows, you can just go outside and build a real snowman.
If this game was a Christmas gift it would be: A family-sized box of chocolates that you consume in one sitting , leaving you feeling a bit sick.
