Christmas scavenger hunt ideas: gift hunt and lights hunt

The week around Christmas has a lot of hours in it. Relatives arrive, the kids are off school, the weather keeps everyone inside, and by the second afternoon someone asks what there is to do. These Christmas scavenger hunt ideas answer that question twice: a gift hunt that turns the presents into the finish line, and a lights hunt for a walk around the neighborhood after dark. Both come with the missions written out in full, plus the teams, timing and rules that let a four-year-old and a grandparent play on the same side.

You do not have to use every mission. Pick eight to twelve from each list, change the details to fit your house and your street, and you have two evenings sorted. If you would rather start from missions written for your exact gathering, type a sentence about it into the free Mission Generator and it gives you 10 to 20 missions to start from, with no signup.

Why a hunt works at Christmas

Most games on a holiday need everyone to be about the same age or to sit still for the same length of time. A hunt needs neither, because a team shares the work. The smallest child finds the ornament, the ten-year-old reads the riddle, the teenager holds the phone and the adult keeps everyone on the sidewalk. Christmas also hands you three things for free:

• The decorations are already up. Your own tree and your neighbors' front yards are the set, so there is very little to hide.
• The presents are already a mystery. Kids spend the whole week wondering where the gifts are. A gift hunt lets you use that curiosity instead of fighting it.
• The crowd is already there. A full house of cousins and grandparents is the hardest group to entertain and the easiest to split into teams.

How to set it up

Allow half an hour the day before for the gift hunt and ten minutes for the lights hunt, less if you start from a generated list. Decide these five things first:

1. Teams. Three to five people per team, each with at least one adult or responsible teenager. Mix the generations on purpose so a grandparent and a six-year-old are on the same side. A family of eight makes two teams; a gathering of twenty makes five.
2. Devices. One phone per team, held by the adult or teen. Small children do not need a screen; they need to be the ones who find things.
3. Boundaries. For the gift hunt, name the rooms that are off limits, usually the one holding the gifts. For the lights hunt, name the streets in play: stay on the sidewalk, cross only at corners, never go up a driveway.
4. Time. Forty-five minutes indoors is right for mixed ages. Outdoors in December, thirty is plenty; cold hands end a hunt faster than boredom.
5. Points. Ten points for a simple find, twenty for anything that takes teamwork, and one or two fifty-point missions that every team will talk about at dinner.

In Scavvy you build the hunt on the web or in the app with four mission types: photo, video, GPS check-in and text or trivia. Teams join from an invite link or a code, and every submission lands in a live feed the whole house can see, with likes, comments and a leaderboard. Over the holidays the feed is the game while people play and the slideshow afterwards when it goes on the TV. A paper list works too; the missions below print fine.

Christmas scavenger hunt ideas for a gift hunt

The gift hunt is a chain of riddles that ends at the presents. Before guests arrive, hide three small paper tags around the house, each with one word on it. In order, the three words name the hiding place of the gifts, for example under, the, stairs. Each riddle leads to one tag; the other missions slow teams down, make them laugh and send them across the room to talk to a relative. With two teams, use a different tag color for each so nobody takes someone else's clue.

• triviaRiddle one: I have hands but never clap, a face but never smile, and I tell you how long until dinner. Find the tag hidden behind me and type the word on it.
• photoPhotograph your team wearing every hat, scarf and glove you can find in the coat closet. Everyone wears at least two items.
• triviaRiddle two: I stay cold all year so the leftovers last, and my door is open more at Christmas than any other week. The tag is taped inside my door. Type the word on it.
• videoTen seconds of the whole team humming a carol in the style of a robot. Every team member has to be in the shot.
• photoFind the ornament on the tree that is older than anyone on your team. Photograph it and write in the caption who it belongs to and where it came from.
• gpsCheck in at the mailbox at the end of the driveway. There is an envelope inside with a bonus clue, and the cold air will wake everyone up.
• triviaRiddle three: I am full of coats but never cold, full of shoes but I never walk, and somebody always leaves me open. The tag is in a pocket. Type the word on it.
• photoBuild a snowman out of anything in the house that is not snow. Photograph it and give it a name in the caption.
• triviaAsk the oldest person in the house what they got for Christmas when they were ten. Type their answer, and ask whether they still have it.
• triviaFinal mission: put the three tag words in order. They spell out where the presents are. Type the place, then go and look. Do not open anything until every team is there.

Change the riddles to match your own hiding spots; a clock, the fridge and the coat closet are easy for an eight-year-old and still fun for an adult. Keep the mission about the oldest person in the house whatever else you cut. It sends a child across the room to a grandparent, and the answers are what people still talk about next year.

A lights hunt for the neighborhood

Run this one after dark on any evening in the two weeks before Christmas. Every mission is done from the sidewalk: nobody steps onto a lawn, goes up a path, or photographs a person who is not on their team. Leave a thermos of hot chocolate with an adult at the halfway check-in.

• photoFind a house with an inflatable in the yard. Take a photo of your team copying its pose exactly.
• photoFind a house lit only in white lights and a house lit in every color there is. One photo of each, both taken from the sidewalk.
• triviaCount every reindeer you can see between the corner and the stop sign. Type your number. The closest team gets the points.
• gpsCheck in at the park gate. This is the halfway point and the hot chocolate stop, so do not rush past it.
• videoTen seconds of the whole team walking in step past the brightest house, swinging your arms like toy soldiers.
• photoFind a wreath on a front door and a wreath somewhere that is not a door. Photograph both from the sidewalk.
• triviaSpot a house with a star on the roof or on the top of a tree you can see through the window. Type the house number.
• videoFifteen seconds on the walk back: each team member says which house was their favorite and why.
• photoTeam portrait in front of the best-lit house on the route, everyone pointing their flashlight straight up like a tree. Last mission of the night.

Swap the GPS check-in for a landmark on your own route: church steps, a corner shop, a friend's driveway. A check-in halfway is also a quiet way to make sure every team walks the whole loop rather than sprinting back to the warm house.

A run of show for Christmas Eve

This timing fits a Christmas Eve with the whole family under one roof. If you would rather do the gift hunt on Christmas morning, keep the same shape and move it to before breakfast; the lights hunt stays the night before.

Adjusting for the guest list

The same two hunts stretch from preschoolers to grandparents if you adjust a few missions instead of writing separate lists:

• Under six: lean on finding and counting. Lights, reindeer, ornaments. Keep the riddles to one or two and let an adult read them, and make sure half the missions can be finished in two minutes.
• Six to ten: this is the age the gift hunt is built for. Give them all three riddles, the snowman and the mailbox.
• Teenagers: hand them the camera and the video missions. Add a bonus for the best toy-soldier walk and they will take it more seriously than they admit.
• Relatives who could not travel: send them the invite link too. They can follow the feed from their own phone, leave comments on the videos and feel like they were in the room.

Mistakes to avoid

• Riddles that are too hard. A riddle an eight-year-old cannot solve stalls the whole team. Test each one on the youngest reader in the house the day before.
• Hiding tags where kids cannot reach or should not go. Nothing on a high shelf, nothing near the oven, nothing in a bedroom that is off limits.
• Only one set of tags. If two teams are playing, the first team to find a tag will take it. Use a color per team and hide one of each.
• Too long in the cold. Thirty minutes outside is enough in December. Put the best missions first in case a small child calls it early.
• No plan for the end. Set a timer, call everyone back, and look at the results together before anyone opens anything.

Once you have run both hunts, they are yours to reuse. Move the tags, rewrite one riddle, pick a different street, and they are ready for next December. When you want a fresh list for a different crowd, an office party or the cousins' sleepover, describe it to the Mission Generator and start from there.