Holiday Games for the Whole Family (No Charades!)

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Have you ever wondered what games “all of the other reindeer” played, that they refused to let poor Rudolph join? That knowledge could come in handy at the holidays, as you try to find parlor games and board games that can reliably entertain family members and guests, young and old. The following is a list of time-honored games—some popular, some obscure—that work well for large groups that span multiple generations.

Humm...ble

Good luck finding this musical, crowd-pleasing game, created in 1991, which features elements of Crainium’s “Star Performer” category and Trivial Pursuit. Players divide into teams and draw cards, which contain the names of thousands of hit songs…from earlier decades. The players hum the melody of the songs they draw, trying to get their teammates to guess the title before the sand runs out. The game is especially fun when players can’t carry a tune. You can create your own Humm...ble by having players write down song titles on 3x5 cards, throw the cards into a mixing bowl, then take turns drawing cards and humming tunes for their teams until the cards run out.

Mah-jongg

A beautiful, antique version of this Chinese game has been in our family for a hundred years, played for hours on rainy or snowy holiday afternoons. The heavy tiles, lavishly carved and colored, made of ivory and bamboo, are stacked in a small rosewood box with brass fittings, and narrow trays. Modern sets are heavy, too, and come in portable briefcases. To play, you scramble the hundreds of tiles, illustrated side down, on the tabletop, which makes a clicking sound known as “the twittering of the sparrows.” Then you stack them in a double row, forming the Great Wall of China. Rolling the dice determines which player is East Wind, and where to open the Wall. From then on, mah-jongg works much like gin rummy—the goal is to assemble pre-determined winning sets of three-of-a-kind (pungs), four of-a kind (kongs), runs (chows), and pairs. The game has three suits with different motifs—characters, bamboo, and circles; and instead of wild cards, mah-jongg has special tiles that add value—winds, dragons, and flowers. The best way to win: “Moon from the Bottom of the Sea,” which is when you draw the last tile on the Wall, and it happens to be a one of circles and completes your hand.

Catch Phrase

The size of a small frisbee, this battery-operated game passes from player to player like a hot potato. Catch Phrase works like Jeopardy!: players divide into teams, choose a category (easy or hard) in each round, then compete to give clues their teammates can guess before the buzzer sounds, at which point the game must be passed to the other team. Favorite past clue: “Things nice people do in the morning.” Answer: “Take a shower?” There are also cellphone apps you can use to play Catch Phrase.

Mexican Train

In this multi-player variant of dominoes, up to eight players can use their tiles—white with dots of different colors—to create a “train line” that departs from a central hub. They can add their own dominoes to each other’s lines as well as to their own.

Spoons

For guaranteed drama, spilled eggnog, and high-spirited participation from everyone six years old and up, Spoons is your go-to card game. Players must be old enough to recognize numbers and face cards. Lay out spoons on the holiday cloth—one spoon fewer than number of players—and appoint one player to start dealing a deck of cards (two decks if more than four are playing). As the cards quickly change hands, players, peel off any that don’t help make a match of four, and pass on the rest. As soon as one player gets four-of-a-kind, they sneak a spoon off the table, then everyone scrambles to grab a remaining spoon. The first to miss a spoon five times loses, but wins the consolation prize of getting to stop playing Spoons.

Star Reporter

Ask your grandparents what games they loved when they were kids, and see if any might earn a spot in your games cupboard. Maybe it’s Twister; maybe it’s Parcheesi or backgammon. And maybe, just maybe, it’s the 1950s board game Star Reporter, steeped in the myths of Clark Kent, His Girl Friday, and hard-bitten journalists who chased stories across the midcentury American map by plane, train, and automobile. It’s a game and it’s a time capsule, two-in-one. And really, aren’t all games time capsules—holding the leisure moments when we played them, on days we spent with family and friends, days without hours?

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