Here are 166 Christmas charades ideas in five piles: movies, songs, characters, actions and things, with 91 easy cards for kids and 75 harder ones for grown-ups. Play them on the phone deck below, which shows the card to the actor only, runs the clock and keeps score, or print every card.
Updated by the Frugal Santa elves
Name your teams, pick your piles and hand the phone to the first actor. Only the actor sees the card. The deck is shuffled, and no card comes back until the whole pile has been played.
The card deck needs JavaScript. Every one of the 166 cards is also written out below, so you can print them, cut them up and draw them from a hat.
Final scores
Time!
Keyboard: right arrow for Got it, left arrow to skip, Esc to end the turn.
Split everyone into two teams and take turns. One player, the actor, looks at a card without showing anyone, then acts it out with no words and no sounds while their own team shouts guesses. Each right guess before the clock runs out wins a point, and then the other team sends up an actor. The deck above does the fiddly parts: it shuffles 166 cards, shows each one only on the actor’s screen, runs a 30, 60 or 90 second clock and keeps the score. The actor keeps drawing new cards until time is up, so a quick team can score several points in one turn. Skip has no penalty. Before you start, agree on two house rules: may the actor say the pile out loud, and may they point at things in the room? For young kids, say yes to both. Play until everyone has acted at least once, and the team with the most points wins.
Charades players share a small set of signs, so the actor can say a lot without a word. First show what kind of title it is: crank an old movie camera for a movie, pretend to sing for a song, open your palms like a book for a book, draw a rectangle in the air for a TV show, and take a bow for a play. Then hold up fingers for the number of words, and again for the word you are about to act. Lay fingers on your forearm to show how many syllables a word has. Tug your earlobe for “sounds like,” then act a word that rhymes with it. Hold your finger and thumb close together for a short word such as “of” or “the.” When someone guesses right, touch your nose and point at them. The Christmas deck adds one easy house rule for the other piles: say “character,” “action” or “thing” before you start, then not another word.
Here is every card in the deck, pile by pile. The ones marked easy are the 91 cards the Kids deck uses: short, physical and easy to picture. The other 75 are for grown-ups and older kids, with full movie and song titles that need the hand signals. Print the page and the cards come out three to a row with dashed lines, ready to cut up and drop in a stocking or a Santa hat. The elves checked every movie and song title against published lists in October 2026.
Movie sign: crank an old movie camera, then hold up fingers for the number of words.
Song sign: pretend to sing, then hold up fingers for the number of words.
Say “character” out loud, then not another word.
Say “action,” then act it out.
Say “thing,” then act it out.
Good Christmas charades for kids are short, physical and easy to picture: building a snowman, a reindeer learning to fly, ice skating, wrapping a present or eating a candy cane. Pick Kids in the deck above and it deals only the 91 easy cards, most of them two to four words long. For kids who can’t read yet, a grown-up can whisper the card in their ear, and the whole family can guess together as one team, so nobody loses. Let young actors say the pile out loud (“It’s an action!”) and point at things in the room. Use the 90 second timer, because little actors need a moment to warm up, and cheer every good try, not only the right answers. Kids who can read can hold the phone themselves, since only the actor sees the card. Older kids can move up to the movie and song cards and learn the hand signals. Afterwards, ask everyone which card was the funniest to watch.
The funniest Christmas charades for grown-ups act out the parts of the season nobody puts on a card: untangling the lights, building a toy at midnight on Christmas Eve, wrapping a present with too much tape, or pretending to love a gift. Pick Grown-ups in the deck above and it deals the 75 harder cards, including long movie and song titles that need the hand signals, from “It’s a Wonderful Life” to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Play two or three teams with 60 seconds a turn, and add one rule: no pointing at things in the room. For a twist, let the other team steal the point with one guess when time runs out. Mixed families work too. Choose Family and the deck mixes easy and hard cards, so a grandparent can draw “Holiday Inn” while a nine-year-old draws “sledding down a hill.” Keep it kind and keep it clean, and the whole room plays.
Christmas Pictionary is charades with a marker. Pick Draw it in the deck above and every card tells the player to draw instead of act. You need a big pad of paper or a whiteboard, a thick marker for each team and the same timer. The drawer looks at the card, then sketches clues while their team guesses out loud. The usual house rules: no letters, numbers or words on the paper, no talking, and no hand signals except pointing at your drawing. Things and characters draw best, like a snow globe, a candy cane or the Grinch, so for younger players turn off the Songs pile. Movie titles get hard fast, which is half the fun for grown-ups. Score it like charades, one point for each right guess, and pass the marker to a new drawer every turn. Short on table space? Play on a tablet with any drawing app, and pass it from team to team between turns.
Not the acting part. A call with Santa is a live video call in your browser, and you need a microphone but not a camera, so play a guessing game in words instead. Pick a card from the deck, describe it without saying the word, and hear what Santa guesses, out loud and live. Kids can tell him which charade made the room laugh hardest, and then what they are hoping for this Christmas. Santa is an AI video character, made for holiday fun, and he follows child-safety rules. Kids call with a grown-up, and grown-ups can call for themselves. Calls cost $1 a minute, for as many minutes as you like, with no subscription and no app. After the call, each wish comes back as a list with real store prices, lowest first, so you can see where each one costs least. It also makes a good prize for the winning team: they get the first turn to talk to Santa.
Talk to Santa on a live video call, or read how a call with Santa works first. More for game night: Christmas bingo cards with a caller, the right left Christmas game, Christmas trivia questions and every game in the Christmas games hub.
Four is a good minimum: two teams of two. A big crowd plays in two to four teams. If the teams get too big for everyone to act, run two games side by side, each with its own phone.
One minute suits most groups. Pick 90 seconds for young kids or very long titles, and 30 seconds for a fast, loud grown-up game.
No. In classic charades the actor stays silent: no words, no humming, no sound effects. The Christmas deck lets the actor say the pile name (“character,” “action” or “thing”) once at the start, as a house rule. Drop it if your group wants it harder.
Charades started in 18th-century France as a written riddle, where each syllable of the answer got its own clue. By the early 1800s people acted them out as a parlor game, and acted charades turn up in “Vanity Fair” and “Jane Eyre.”
Tap Skip and act the next one. Skipped cards go to the bottom of the deck and come back later in the game, so they may land on another actor.
Yes. Use the Print button under the card list, or your browser’s own Print command. The page prints only the 166 cards, three to a row with dashed cut lines, and leaves out the game.
Yes. The deck, the timer, the scores and the printable cards are free, with no sign-up. Nothing you type is sent anywhere. Only a live video call with Santa costs money, at $1 a minute.
Live videoA live video call with Santa for kids and grown-ups. Tell him which card made the room laugh, then what you’re wishing for. Each wish comes back with store prices, lowest first. $1 a minute.
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