Does your holiday revolve around spending time with your family, cousins, your strange uncle that stresses you out beyond belief? Christmas does bring out a lot of stress and emotions to make the perfect dinner and having the patience to tolerate certain family members. Here are ways to make the most wonderful time of the year more enjoyable!
1.) Bring Up New Conversations
If you start to hear the most dreaded politics discussion during the special Christmas dinner, raise your voice to get everyone’s attention to positively change the conversation. Some ideas to bring up are starting a new game, the hype of the new season of Game of Thrones, the Cowboys offense, or even the new season of “The Bachelor” and pray that it’s successful….
2.) Have a Christmas Wrapping Competition
Instead of bickering over your opposing views about politics, find a game to bring your family together such as forming two teams. One person on each team will be picked to be wrapped and decorated (grandparents are a great candidate for this). Both teams have 5 minutes to decorate their team member. Here’s a catch, each team member can only use one hand. Whatever team is the most successful wins.
3.) Sing Christmas Carols
To get everyone in the festive mood a great tradition to do to involve people in singing Christmas carol. Some fun examples is to give everyone a part in “12 Days of Christmas,” and whoever sings (screams) the loudest receives an extra present.
4.) Plan a Game of White Elephant
This is a nice alternative to Secret Santa so no one gets jealous that one cousin gave your sister a cooler gift. A game of what elephant and get everyone involved. The point is to buy a gift with the price range. Next, everyone sits in a circle and one person picks out a gift the next person can either pick out another gift or take a another person’s gift. There is usually a gift in there that everyone wants, which usually brings out the family competition.
and hope you don’t end up with the gift nobody wants….
< img src="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/3a053b_6cff91202f7442e28dfc86544da54af9~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_220,h_300/3a053b_6cff91202f7442e28dfc86544da54af9~mv2.jpg" alt="steve carrell in santa hat" width="220" height="300" />
5.) Pie Face
What’s better than making your family laugh when Grandma is getting whipped cream smacked in her face.
6.) Play Heads Up
There is nothing better than acting out hilarious animal or celebrity impressions and being recorded at the same time. Better yet, Ellen DeGeneres promotes the game on her show. The great message that Ellen brings out is to remind people to be kind to one another, even though that one family member cannot answer any of the hints.