Christmas challenges

I'm a little late (or early!) to be posting about Christmas, but this is one of the games we enjoyed at our district Christmas party last year.

We played a festive version of Pass-the-Parcel swaps, with new Christmas themed challenges mixed into the usual challenges. Here are the rules and challenges for the original game that we play.

Christmas variations:

~ Dramatically melt like a snowman.
~ Say "Merry Christmas" to everybody in the circle, one at a time.
~ Prance like a reindeer.
~ Name three Christmas movies.
~ Limbo under a candy cane.
~ Choose a partner and together recite two lines of a Christmas carol.
~ Name five of Santa's reindeer.
~ Twist like a candy cane
~ Pictionary challenge: a fireplace.
~ Run like a gingerbread person.
~ Say this tongue-twister, three times fast! "Pretty packages perfectly packed in paper."
~ Pictionary challenge: Santa on a surfboard.
~ Play telephone. Can you send a Christmas message around the circle?
~ Roll like an ornament.
~ List the gifts given on the 12 days of Christmas eg. A partridge in a pear tree.

This is such a fun game when the girls let go of their inhibitions and just go for it! Twisting like a candy cane was one of the funniest things i've seen in a long time. And listing the gifts from the 12 days of Christmas confused everybody so much that the Leader's got out their phones to Google the exact verses!

This game lasted us close about an hour. There was no time limit if a girl tried to answer a question, she got as much time as she needed to answer. With so much to get through each meeting, sometimes we do need answers to be instant or we move onto another girl to try again. So it was nice to slow things down and give girls the time to think. Because of this, I don't think one single girl forfeited her challenge! 

Here are the drawings from the Pictionary challenges. The first is Santa riding a surfboard (Australian-style) and the second is a fireplace (you couldn't tell?!).

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Have you played Pass-the-Parcel forfeits? 

It is such a great game to adapt to any theme or situation - and prep time doesn't take too long. Themes that work really well would be knotting or first aid, where the girls have to answer questions (When do you use a reef knot? How do you treat a minor burn?) or complete practical challenges (Tie a clove hitch. Make a sling for a friend).