Games · Long read

Christmas Emoji Game: 40 Clues With Answers (Songs, Movies and Traditions)

A ready-to-play Christmas emoji game with answers, plus how to run it as a group at home, at school or at work.

An emoji game lives on its clues, so the clues come first: forty of them, sorted by category and difficulty, with every answer hidden until you tap it. All of them were written for this page, for paper or read-aloud play. (FamParty's Emoji Decoder, mentioned later, runs the same shape on TV with its own general pack — none of these forty are in the app.) After the clues, there's a short guide to running the game, and to writing your own clues that are hard for the right reasons.

Christmas songs

Christmas movies

Traditions and festive things

How to run it as a group

For a mixed-age room, run the easy set as a warm-up with everyone shouting, then switch to individual or paired answers for medium and hard. For a classroom or team, pairs beat solo: the discussion between the two people holding one phone is most of the fun and most of the noise, in the good way.

Scoring is worth deciding before the first clue, because it changes how people play. Fastest-correct-wins makes a room loud and rewards the confident; one point per correct answer, whenever it comes, keeps younger players in it to the last clue. Teams of two split the difference: one person reads the emoji names aloud — which, as the hard set shows, is sometimes the hint itself — and the other holds the answer sheet. If you're playing on paper, let pairs mark their own and swap sheets to check; the checking is where the arguments about whether "tree plus rock" can mean two different songs happen, and those arguments are the best part.

Writing your own clues

Build the phrase from its sounds, not its meaning. Start from the answer and break it into syllables; find an emoji whose name sounds like each syllable; fill gaps with literal pictures. "Mistletoe" is 💋 (kiss) plus 🦶 (toe) if you want it hard, or 🌿 with a kiss for medium. The mistake to avoid is picturing the "idea": three snowflakes could be winter, snow, cold, or Christmas itself, and a clue that could be anything is just a guess. Test every clue on one person who hasn't seen the answer. If they get it in under a minute with one wrong turn, it's a good medium. If they get it instantly, it's easy. If they're still stuck, add one literal emoji — never remove one.

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