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The holiday season is an ideal time for small churches to host activities that encourage connection and fellowship across all ages. These events can help involve older members, who may feel isolated during this time of year, and ensure that they feel like they are a valued part of the Christmas celebration at your church
Intergenerational Christmas activities also encourage younger church members to appreciate and build friendships with adults, as well as seniors, creating opportunities for laughter, conversation, and relationship-building. This article offers seven fun activities for small churches to try during the Christmas season to promote these connections. Let’s get started!
Prioritizing Intergenerational Connections During The Holidays
Did you know that nearly one-third of adults aged 50 and older have experienced holiday loneliness? Many feel left out if they have no close family nearby or they have experienced loss. As a church family, including and valuing people of all ages is one of the reasons why Jesus established the church in the first place. The Christmas season, which highlights the love that Jesus brought to us, is a perfect time to demonstrate love to others in our small church families!
It’s easy to get distracted by all the busyness of the holidays, so we need to make sure that the activities and events that we are promoting are inclusive and promote connectivity within our church. Demonstrating love and reaching out to many ages is not only a great example for your younger members, but it also shows the heart of your church to the community.
7 Fun Intergenerational Christmas Activities
1. Christmas Trivia Night – Through The Decades!
You will need a large game board made from foam core pieces or if you have a portable white/chalkboard available, that would work as well. Make your category names, then make smaller envelopes or folded pieces of paper under your title sheets with the ‘Decade’ year and the trivia question.
You can use categories like popular Christmas music, most sought-after Christmas toys, special events or happenings from a specific year in a decade, etc.
You’ll need a couple of people willing to do some online research to help make up your trivia questions and someone to put the game board together. You could also make the gameboard a digital game board and project it on a screen if you have someone with computer skills.
You will need someone to act as the ‘MC’ for the night to introduce rounds, ask the questions, and keep the audience engaged!
The point of the party is to mix teams of various ages, getting each team to sit together and make connections with each other. This is also a great way for different age groups to appreciate others and work together to have fun. Have each team come up with a team name. You can include everyone or just set a certain number of teams and have the rest of the people act as ‘the audience’ and cheer them on.
Award points for correct answers-have an official scorekeeper and at the end of the night crown the winning team. Award each team member a small silly gift and don’t forget to take team pictures of all the fun. Post those pics (with permission, of course) online to your small church’s social media and possibly make a bulletin board display in the lobby to spark further conversations and connect your church family even more!
2. Cards & Cookies For First Responders
Gather supplies to handcraft Christmas cards for the first responders in your community. Inquire in your small church if you have someone who does paper crafting as a hobby and get them on board to help gather supplies and make some samples of easy cards to put together.
Supplies needed:
- Blank cards & envelopes
- Rubber stamps & inks
- Markers & colored pencils
- Stickers and decorative scrapbook papers
- Glue sticks, paper glues, tapes & scissors
You will set up several tables for card making and then several tables for cookie decorating and wrapping cookie platters with decorative basket bags and curling ribbons.
Ask for volunteer bakers and provide them with ingredients & cookie cutters to make plain cut-out sugar cookies before your event. Come up with a determined number that you will need for your platters. Make sure to have enough cookies so that you can have some for refreshments too.
Make a list of all the decorative ingredients you will need and appoint a ‘shopper’ to gather the supplies.
Suggested Items:
- 3 colors of frosting
- Sprinkles of various colors and shapes
- Disposable decorating/piping bags (available in craft stores or online)
- Various candies and adornments for cookies
- Dollar store or discount platters & basket bag wrap, curling ribbons
When guests arrive, assemble teams of various ages. Some teams were assigned to cookie decorating, some to platter making, and some to card making, then switch, so everyone can participate in all the aspects! Encourage older adults to help younger ones and the reverse where necessary! Don’t know how to do cookie decorating? Watch a video together and try it out as part of your fun night.
At the end of the evening gather everyone around for a group photo and a time of prayer for all those you will be giving the platters to.
Ask for a few volunteers to go together to deliver the platters and send them on their way. If you’d rather have the whole group go to each responders station, they could deliver to them and sing them a Christmas song as well. Make it a fun event that fits your small church family.
This event connects people of different ages around the tables as well as shows your community your appreciation for the service of your First Responders.
3. Interactive Christmas Story Reading
Gather together to read the Christmas Story from Luke 1:26-38 & Luke 2:1-20. You will need to print the story out in the Bible translation that best suits your small church.
As guests arrive, divide the room into groups. Give each group a portion of scripture that they will be responsible to read aloud and act out when called on.
Make a costume ‘wardrobe’. This could be a large box filled with old costumes from other plays, bathrobes, plain sheets, or yardage of fabric that can be wrapped around people. Throw in whatever you think can be used, adornments, props, stuffed animals, tiaras, angel wings, etc. This wardrobe stash will be made available to all the different groups as they perform their reading.
Have some poster paper and markers available for teams that want to make signs to enhance their performance!
Give teams ample time together to figure out who will do what and how they will act out their section. Mixing older readers with first-time readers, experienced ‘actors’ with those who are less bold, is what makes the connections fun and relationships start to build, because you are building memories all at the same time!
When it’s time for the ‘official reading of the Christmas story’, gather everyone together and have each group offer their presentation. If you have someone who’s good at videos, ask them to record, edit, and post it for all to see. It’s Christmas through the eyes of your church family! Guaranteed to be an event that will be talked about for days to come.
4. Christmas Bingo & Blessings
Many people associate playing bingo with two groups of people, senior citizens and kids. Why not invite all to come to a special night of Christmas Bingo and, while you’re at it, invite the young adults, youth group kids, and everyone else too!
If you have parents with young children, they can play as teams or set up a small play area where they can be in the same room with some toys, where eyes can be on them. Ask for a volunteer to get some inexpensive gifts to use as prizes.
Print out your Christmas Bingo cards, you can play a traditional Bingo, or use a Nativity Christmas card (available online). You can also find free Bingo card generators online and make your own
Use fun facts about the people attending the party like:
- This person traveled to Australia last Christmas.
- Someone here received a scooter last Christmas.
- This man was in the Army for 30 years.
- This girl is singing a solo at the Christmas play at school…etc.
When that square gets called and everyone who has that on their card marks it, then you have the ‘caller/MC’ ask for the person to identify themselves. This is a great way for folks to find out fun facts about others in your group. It may take a bit longer in the prep but it is a surefire way to bring that intergenerational connection and spark more conversations long after your event!
5. Lights, Camera, Christmas Carol!
Many of the teens in your youth group are familiar with music videos, and some of them have probably even made their own performance videos. Incorporate some of them into this event and let them show everyone their creativity and let the adults get an appreciation for their technological savvy, even if they don’t possess it themselves!
The event team will need to decide on a Christmas carol before your gathering. You will break down the carol into lines and distribute that to each mixed-age group of guests. Each group will be asked to ‘perform’ their line of the song any way they choose, but they must use actions and/or props to do the actions of the song.
Some suggested songs:
- Angels We Have Heard on High
- The First Noel
- O Come All Ye Faithful
- We Three Kings
Your official ‘producers’ will videotape each group performing their line of the song and then at the end gather everyone at the party together to do either the chorus or the last line together.
Then show the video on the big screen while everyone enjoys refreshments together. This event may take coordination and technical abilities, but will be worth the laughter and smiles across all generations that it will produce.
6. Silly Slippers, Socks, & Soup Night
Anyone can do an ugly sweater contest, but who’s doing a silly slippers or sock event? Invite your small church family members, young and old to join in for this fun night of silliness. This event will have a multi-fold purpose, a night of smiles and creative fashion exposition, a gathering for dinner with homemade soup and warm conversations around the tables, and finally a way to help others by asking all your guests to bring donations of new socks to donate to your local homeless shelter.
On your invitations and your promotional materials make sure to encourage participants to ‘embellish’ plain slippers to make them over the top Christmas for your fashion contest. Guests can also wear silly holiday socks instead or create their own.
Find your hospitality team for the evening to provide soups, bread, and desserts. Whether you live in a cold weather area or not, soup is a comforting and welcoming food choice.
You will need a ‘fashion runway’ (a simple red runner taped on the floor will do), and fun holiday music playing while the MC announces each contestant and describes their creation!
Appoint a multi-generational panel of judges to decide on winners in several silly categories. You can award a simple medal or silly trophy to your winners.
Have your fashion show contest first in the evening, as some of the slippers and socks, may be a bit much to have on all night! After your contest, invite the guests to gather around the tables for homemade soup and Christmas conversation.
Make some Christmas conversation starter cards to put on each table to encourage connections and develop common interests with other attendees.
Some questions on the cards could be:
- Where’s the snowiest Christmas you’ve ever spent?
- Have you ever been in a Nativity play?
- Do you go caroling? If so, where?
- Does your family have a real tree or an artificial one?
This is a low-key, fun event that welcomes all ages to participate together, and laughing together is a great way to establish bonds.
7. Candy Cane Jamboree Night
This event is focused on games and laughter. All the games will be centered around the ‘candy cane’ theme and there are so many simple ones that can be readily found online. You can also convert other games by changing names within a game to tie in with your theme.
Some suggested games:
- 4 Contestants – Give each one a candy cane. Place a pile of candy canes in the middle of the table, contestants put their candy cane in their mouth and have a timed limit to see how many canes they can ‘pick up’ with theirs. The one with the most wins.
- Play a game of ‘Scattergories’ – Break up into teams (could be families), give each team a blank sheet of paper. Then cut up the letters to the word ‘candy cane’ and place them in a bag. The MC picks out a letter and teams come up with as many Christmas-themed words beginning with that letter as they can. You could change the category each round if you like, i.e., Christmas food, Christmas stocking stuffers, Christmas cookie flavors, etc. The trick is, you only get 2 minutes to come up with words and you only get points for words that no one else writes down!
- Candy Cane Relay – Have multiple aged people on a team. Give each person on the team a candy cane. The goal is to move all your candy canes to a bowl at the other end of the room. Line up. The last person in line is your candy cane ‘commander’. At ‘go’, they hook the next person’s candy cane on theirs and then walk as quickly as they can to the bowl at the other end, dump the candy cane in there, walk back, and get the next person’s candy cane, etc. down the line. The first team to have all their candy canes in the bowl wins.
Refreshments for the evening should also follow along the theme lines, but don’t limit it to just candy cane flavor! You can also have foods that are ‘red’ and ‘white’, i.e., a charcuterie board with white cheese and red pepperoni, alternated in a candy cane pattern! Make refreshments available all through the evening and encourage guests to ‘graze’ through the refreshment area whenever they like. This enhances the casual family feel of the event.
When guests arrive, have the MC explain the process of the evening. The MC will also be the one to choose different people to participate in the various games, while the rest of the attendees act as the audience. This allows those who are more shy or reserved to just watch, but still feel valued and included in the midst of the activity and fun.
An MC is helpful in directing the games, keeping things moving and organized, and encouraging audience engagement.
This event is a great activity to invite unchurched friends to. It’s a low-key casual gathering that can include new people in the fun as they get to know your church family members.
Memories To Last A Lifetime
As you can see, small church intergenerational activities at Christmas can be the perfect launching pad to encourage relationships, have fun, and build connections in your church. As these events are fun and light-hearted, they also help to build the church as a family, it demonstrates how to care for one another and helps us to value those around us in a way that perhaps we never have before.
Memories shared are moments that spur us on to want to spend time with one another. When we all participate in events and mix our various ages and stages, we can appreciate everyone’s gifts and the value that they add to our small church community. Whether it’s playing games at a fun Christmas activity or working on an outreach event together, we are building the family of Christ and that’s what it’s all about!
So if you try any of these activities at your small church, we would love to know about it and see the results! Don’t forget to share some pictures with us in our Small Church Facebook Community.
Merry Christmas!
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