6 Christmas Games In One

So, you're home for the holidays, a few days chez parents stuffing your face with brazil nuts and polishing off their scotch.Hah. By Christmas Day, you'll be slumped in front of the telly, watching Steve McQueen motorcycling towards that barbed wire fence with thinly disguised envy. But don't be down. Make the best of your incarceration by these traditional family Christmas games.

1. Dead Lions The game starts when you and your partner are relegated to separate single beds in the parental home. The aim is to tiptoe across the landing to the room where your better half is sleeping, without waking the slumbering parents, or "lions". Once in the room, anxious, hushed coupling may take place. Remember: this game favours the "lions", since they have had three months' notice to install rusty springs and a headboard that, at the slightest hint of sexual congress, bangs against the bedroom wall like a jackhammer.	2. 20 Questions Play begins at noon on Boxing Day. You open the game by clapping your hands together and saying, "Well, we really must be going…" Play then passes to the parents, who are allowed twenty yes-or-no questions to try and stall your departure. The first question must be "Are you sure you won't stay for some cold meats?", followed by "You know the trains are not running?". Questions are allowed to escalate with no top limit, even as far as "You do realise your father might not still be here next year…?"	3. Hide And Seek As soon as all the presents have been opened, the game is on! In round one, the parents set the challenge by purchasing some astonishingly bad gifts. You must then do your best to "Hide" your disappointment at having been given a pair of Argyll socks or tights again. Play now moves upstairs to the parents' bedroom, where you rustle surreptitiously through the bin, desperately trying to "Seek" out the Marks and Sparks receipts that you know must be lurking somewhere amongst the yards of crumpled wrapping paper...
4. Pass The Sprouts After the excitement of putting a paper hat on your head has been allowed to die down, you may enjoy playing the classic dinner table game, "Pass The Sprouts". One player from the parents' team places a tureen in the centre of the dining table, containing a mound of blanched and pureed globes that may once have been sprouts. Play moves clockwise around the table as the other players "pass the sprouts", poking them occasionally with a fork and saying "Mmm, these look good", but never taking one, as if in fear for their lives. The winner is the person at the end of dinner who hasn't been talked into having a sprout.	5. Charades The players position themselves round the television set, watching the Maisie Raine Christmas Special. Play commences when someone declares their intention to watch, say, A View To A Kill in half an hour. Play passes to the left, with player two claming that there's something much better on, for example a documentary with David Jason and a dolphin. Each player in turn must now state which programme they would much rather be watching, with no programme allowed more than one vote. The game is repeated ad nauseum until the whole Christmas evening has been wasted.	6. They're Called Cheeses Clear the table and set everything up as if you were about to play a game of Trivial Pursuit. Turn all the wheel-shaped pieces upside down and use a safety pin to prise out the coloured plastic segments that have somehow got jammed in the wrong way round. This opens play. Player one offers an opening gambit by tutting and saying, "Bloody hell, have all the wedges have got stuck in the sodding holes again?" Player two must now roll their eyes and say, "They're called cheeses." Play passes back to player one, who says, "No, I think you'll find they're called wedges." A third player may now enter, insisting that, "They're pieces of pie, actually." And so on. No Trivial Pursuit is actually played. The last player to flounce upstairs in a strop wins.