Christmas Quiz Ideas for Families (That Aren’t General Knowledge)

The standard family Christmas quiz is general knowledge, and it is always won by whichever relative reads the most. A quiz about your own family is a different animal: the youngest person in the room can beat the oldest, nobody can revise, and every question produces a story.

Here is a round-by-round plan you can fill in with your own family’s material in about half an hour.

Round 1 — Family history

Facts from before most of the room was born. Ask the oldest person present to supply these, and do not tell anyone else what is coming.

• •What was Grandad’s first job?
• •Which town did the family live in before this one?
• •How did Mum and Dad actually meet — and what is the version they tell strangers?
• •What was the first car in the family?
• •Who is the oldest person in the oldest photo we own?
• •What was the name of the first family pet?

Round 2 — Christmases past

Every family has a canon of Christmas incidents. This round is where you formalise it.

• •Which year did the oven break?
• •Who has cried at a Christmas dinner and claimed it was the onions?
• •What is the worst present ever given in this family, and who gave it?
• •Which board game is now banned, and why?
• •Who fell asleep first last year?
• •What time do we actually eat, versus the time we say we will eat?

Round 3 — Who said it?

Collect six things family members say constantly. Read them out; the room guesses who. This is reliably the funniest round, and it requires almost no preparation — you already know all six.

Round 4 — Photos

Six photos, one question each: what year, who is missing, whose house, or simply “what is happening here?” Baby photos of the adults in the room work better than anything else you can put on a screen.

Round 5 — The children’s round

Written by the youngest people present, about themselves, and scored generously. Two things happen: children get to be the experts for five minutes, and the adults discover they have not been listening.

Round 6 — Predictions

Six questions about next year, answered on paper, sealed, and opened next Christmas. It is not scoreable now, which is the point — it gives next year’s quiz its opening round.

How to include people who are not there

Christmas quizzes are a good way to handle absence, whether someone is working, abroad, or unwell.

1. 1Send them the same quiz as a link an hour before, and read their score out with everyone else’s.
2. 2Record their answers to two questions in advance as voice notes and play them in the room.
3. 3Give them a round to write. Being the author of round three from three thousand miles away is a real form of presence.
4. 4Ask them to be the quizmaster on a video call, so they run the evening rather than watch it.

Practical notes

• •Six rounds of four to six questions is about forty minutes, which is the outer limit after a large meal.
• •Answers on paper for a room; a link on phones if half the family is elsewhere.
• •Have one adult keep score who is not playing, or nominate the most trustworthy teenager.
• •Set a rule about phones early, and know that the rule will be broken by round three.
• •Keep a copy. Family quizzes are worth repeating, and the questions you wrote this year will be the archive material in ten.

Using the quiz as a present

A quiz about somebody’s life makes an unusually good gift for grandparents, who tend to have every object they need and no interest in acquiring more. Build one about them, put a photo or a video message at the end, and hand them a tablet after lunch. It costs nothing and it is the thing that gets talked about in February.