Christmas games for family
This is not a game. It is 50 questions for the hour after the games finish, when the table has thinned and nobody wants charades again — about this day, the year just gone, and the people in the room.
Easy ones, to start
Nobody opens with the hard question. These are the ones you can ask with the plates still on the table, and they still tell you something.
- Who here makes everything feel calmer just by turning up?
- Who here would you back to survive a week in the wild, and why them?
- What went well for you this year that you never got round to mentioning?
- What have you learned from somebody at this table without them ever teaching you?
- What did you finish this year that you're pleased with, however small?
- Who helped you this year in a way they probably didn't think twice about?
- What does somebody have to do to make you feel properly looked after when you're ill?
- Who in this family always clocks that something's wrong before anybody says so?
- What's something everybody in this family pretends to enjoy?
- What part of today would you keep exactly as it was if we ran it again tomorrow?
- How can everyone tell when you've had enough and need ten minutes on your own?
- What's something in this room you'd never notice unless you went looking for it?
- If we could keep only one thing we ate today and lose the rest, what has to stay?
- If today were a film, what would it be called?
- If we all had to spend next December somewhere else entirely, where should it be?
- If you had to take on somebody else's daily routine for a fortnight, whose would you pick?
- What's a question you've always wanted to ask somebody at this table?
Questions that actually go somewhere
The middle rung. Still safe, but the answer is about who someone is rather than what they did, which is the whole difference.
- What have you stopped worrying about that used to take up an enormous amount of room?
- What were you dreading back in January, and how did it actually go?
- Which day of this year would you happily live through again, exactly as it went?
- What did you have a go at this year without knowing whether you'd be any good?
- What's the most useful thing anybody said to you this year?
- What gets done in this house that nobody ever sees being done?
- What's changed about you this year that nobody has mentioned?
- What did you spend most of your time on this year, and was that what you expected?
- What's the job you always end up with on a day like today, and did you ever choose it?
- What has to be going on for a house to feel full?
- What was the end of December like in your house when you were a child?
- What's your earliest memory of this time of year?
- Which bit of today would you be genuinely annoyed about if we skipped it next year?
- What has to happen before somebody counts as family?
- Who have you got closer to this year, and how did that come about?
- What did this family do every year that we quietly stopped doing?
When something is off
The ones people skip. Skipping them is usually why the same thing keeps coming back.
- What do you get told off for that you think is completely unfair?
- How long is the right amount of time to spend with relatives before everyone needs a break?
- What do people in this family always assume you want, and get wrong every time?
- What job today has everybody been hoping somebody else would deal with?
- What's a story from years back that you and somebody here tell in two totally different ways?
- What do you need today that you've never actually asked anyone for?
- What's the rule about today that nobody ever wrote down but everybody follows?
- What do you put off deciding until somebody else decides it for you?
- When did somebody in this family surprise you by turning out to be right?
Where things are going
Fewer of these on purpose. A conversation that is only about the future is a planning meeting.
- What's one small change that would make next year run better for you?
- What's happening early next year that you're glad about?
- What did you start doing this year that you'd like to keep doing?
- What's the first thing you want to do once today is properly over?
- What could this family have a go at next year that we've never done before?
- What are you hoping somebody else here pulls off next year?
- What did this year teach you that you weren't expecting to learn?
- What would you do with a whole free year if one landed in your lap?
Some questions are easier to answer when neither of you chose them.
Turn one over. You would not have picked it — that is the point.
Six questions from this page, face down.
On the site they live on a wheel. You spin, it lands, nobody chose it.
Does any of this actually work?
A table of twelve is not one conversation, and that is measured rather than felt. Observations of freely forming conversational groups in everyday settings put an upper limit of about four people on the number who can hold a single spontaneous conversation — and the authors attribute that ceiling to the mechanics of speech production and hearing, not to manners. So by the time the plates are cleared, a table of twelve has already broken into three or four conversations. A question aimed at everybody at once is arguing with that.
Size also changes who gets listened to. In an experiment comparing group discussions at two sizes, five-person groups behaved like dialogue: members were influenced most by the people they actually exchanged words with. Ten-person groups behaved like serial monologue — members were influenced most by the dominant speaker. Same task, different number of chairs. Which is an argument for asking your question inside the group of four you are already sitting in, rather than tapping a glass and putting it to the whole room. The whole room is where a question goes to become a speech.
And the famous finding about deeper questions does not transfer to this table. Across experiments 1a–5, conversations went better than people expected — less awkward, more connecting — and the misprediction was largest for the deep questions rather than the shallow ones. The part almost nobody quotes is Experiment 5, where participants predicted their conversations more accurately when the other person was a close friend, a family member or a partner, because what people misjudge is how much a stranger cares, and with family that is already known. So the usual promise — it will go better than you fear — is weakest exactly where this page is set. You are not miscalibrated about your own family; you are right about the room. Which is why nothing here sits at the deep end.
For the ordinary-Tuesday version of this table, the family dinner questions are the set to use. This one is about the day itself.
Dunbar, Duncan & Nettle (1995), Size and structure of freely forming conversational groups, Human Nature · source
Fay, Garrod & Carletta (2000), Group Discussion as Interactive Dialogue or as Serial Monologue: The Influence of Group Size, Psychological Science · source
Kardas, Kumar & Epley (2022), Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · source
None of this helps a room that is already tense. A question asked across an argument that has been running for four years is not a question, it is a move, and everybody at the table will hear it as one. On that kind of day the loud game is the correct call — it gives people something to do with their faces, and that is a real service, not a lesser one.
Last checked 28 August 2026.