Year after year, families gather together for the holidays to do the same exact thing. They exchange presents, listen to Christmas music and eat familiar homemade dishes. After doing this for countless years, it can get a little boring. Here are some ideas to spice up your family holiday parties:

1.Have an ornament decorating competition. Pair up family members in teams and have them come up with an ornament design. Pick one person to draw the design on the ornament. Have a non-competing family member judge the ornaments. The team that wins receives a Christmas related prize!

2. Christmas sock exchange. Each member of the family buys a pair of Christmas socks and fills them with little gifts like candy, Chapstick, candy canes and other little knick-knacks. When everyone is together, each person picks a number out of a hat. Whoever has the first number, picks a sock from the pile they are placed in -- but they cannot open the sock yet! Then the next person can either steal the first person's sock or pick a sock out of the pile, and this continues until everyone has a sock. The sock you have then belongs to you, and you get to keep whatever is inside!

3.Have a candy cane hunt. This is a Christmas spin on an Easter egg hunt! Have someone hide candy canes throughout the house. If you want to get more exciting, you can even hide them outside (bonus points if there is snow on the ground!). The person who finds the most candy canes wins and also gets to eat their candy canes – it's a win-win situation.

4.Stocking guessing game. A member of the family is designated to fill a stocking up with treats. Gather everyone together, and the person who guesses the most amount of items in the stocking correctly gets to keep the stocking and its contents!

5.Make snow ice cream. If it snows on Christmas Eve or Christmas day, try making snow ice cream! All you need per person is 4 cups of snow, 1 cup of milk, 1/4 cups of sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Happy Holidays!