Christmas is a time for parties and games — the more the merrier.

Back in the days when people had parlors and had to make up their own entertainment, parlor games were a fun pastime. Remember the scene in "A Christmas Carol" when they played The Minister's Cat?

You, too, can have that same old-fashioned fun with some of these holiday games.

Writing games

In other words

Can you guess the names of these Christmas songs?

1. Tucked into a desolate point halfway to spring

2. Winged beings belonging to effulgent kingdoms.

3. A chocolate-covered cake blithely floating above.

4. Questions come to me while I aimlessly rove.

5. A special winter day devoid of any color.

6. Ascend, Oh crook user and come after.

7. I won't be off in some distant place when it's time to open presents.

8. The smog-less bewitching hour arrived.

9. Leave and do an elevated broadcast.

10. That exiguous hamlet south of the holy city.

11. Oh, member of the round table with missing areas.

12. Cup-shaped instruments fashioned of a whitish metallic element.

13. May the Deity bestow an absence of fatigue to mild male humans.

14. Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of minute crystals.

15. Tranquility upon the terrestrial sphere.

16. Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds.

17. Nocturnal time span of unbroken quietness.

18. An emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good given to the terrestrial sphere.

19. Diminutive, masculine master of skin covered percussionist cylinders.

20. Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal and devout in their belief.

21. The Christmas preceding all others.

22. As the guardians of woolly animals protected their charges in the shadows of the Earth.

23. In a feeding trough for farm animals placed in a distant location.

24. 288 hours of Yuletide.

25. Do you perceive the same longitudinal pressure which stimulates my auditory sense organs?

(Answers at end of story)

Reindeer scramble

Give players a paper with the following scrambled words (or make up some of your own). The player who unscrambles them all first wins the prize. Or, set a time limit, see who gets the most.

dolruhp (Rudolph) tmceo (Comet) ndcare (Dancer) hslige (sleigh) pduic (Cupid) caks (sack)

ndored (Donder) veels (elves) rathew (wreath)

snperets (presents) gthin (night) nrrcpae (Prancer)

ltzbine (Blitzen) lootrhnep (North Pole) sshrctima (Christmas)