A Christmas song emoji quiz shows a row of emoji, and players name the song it spells out: 🔴👃🦌 is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Below are 24 clues, each checked so it spells exactly one well-known song, grouped into easy, medium and hard rounds of eight, with the answer, the usual artist, and three decoy titles for running it as multiple choice.
After the clues: how to print it, how to put it on the TV, and the one rule to announce first.
The rule to announce before clue one
Every clue on this page follows two conventions, and the room needs to hear them before the first clue, not after the first argument.
- The tree means Christmas: 🎄 always stands for the word "Christmas", except in one clue where it is literally the Christmas tree.
- The title, not the lyric: easy and medium clues spell the title. Only the hard round uses lyrics, and it says so.
Decide now what counts as right. Accept a title with a word missing or without its brackets, so "Happy Xmas" is enough. Ruling on it halfway through a family round always looks like you are favouring someone.
24 Christmas song emoji clues with answers
Easy: word for word
Each emoji stands for a word or a name in the title. Start here, so everyone learns how the clues work.
- 1.
🔴👃🦌
Answer: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Gene Autry). Decoys: Run Rudolph Run, Here Comes Santa Claus, Up on the Housetop.
- 2.
🎅🔜🏘️
Answer: Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Decoys: Here Comes Santa Claus, Santa Baby, Up on the Housetop.
- 3.
⬜🎄
Answer: White Christmas (Bing Crosby). Decoys: Blue Christmas, O Christmas Tree, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
- 4.
🤫🌃
Answer: Silent Night. Decoys: O Holy Night, Away in a Manger, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.
- 5.
🤏🥁👦
Answer: The Little Drummer Boy. Decoys: Mary's Boy Child, Away in a Manger, Little Donkey.
- 6.
3️⃣👑
Answer: We Three Kings. Decoys: Good King Wenceslas, The First Noel, O Come, All Ye Faithful.
- 7.
1️⃣2️⃣📅🎄
Answer: The Twelve Days of Christmas. Decoys: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, Wonderful Christmastime, Last Christmas.
- 8.
🎅👶
Answer: Santa Baby (Eartha Kitt). Decoys: Santa Tell Me, Little Saint Nick, Here Comes Santa Claus.
Medium: one step to take
One emoji per clue needs a second thought: a synonym, a pun or a sum.
- 1.
🔔🔔🤘
Answer: Jingle Bell Rock (Bobby Helms). Decoys: Jingle Bells, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, Run Rudolph Run.
- 2.
🥶⛄
Answer: Frosty the Snowman. Decoys: Walking in the Air, Baby, It's Cold Outside, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
- 3.
🥈🔔
Answer: Silver Bells (Bing Crosby). Decoys: Jingle Bells, Carol of the Bells, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.
- 4.
🤘🔄🎄
Answer: Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (Brenda Lee). The one clue where the tree is the tree. Decoys: Jingle Bell Rock, O Christmas Tree, Deck the Halls.
- 5.
😂➡️🌍
Answer: Joy to the World. The emoji's name is "face with tears of joy". Decoys: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Do They Know It's Christmas?
- 6.
🧚📖🗽
Answer: Fairytale of New York (The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl). Decoys: Christmas Wrapping, Winter Wonderland, Merry Xmas Everybody.
- 7.
🚗🏠🎄
Answer: Driving Home for Christmas (Chris Rea). Decoys: (There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Sleigh Ride.
- 8.
🎄📝 = 🫵
Answer: All I Want for Christmas Is You (Mariah Carey). The Christmas list is just you. Decoys: Santa Baby, Underneath the Tree, Last Christmas.
Hard: lyrics and wordplay
Tell the room this round can use a famous lyric instead of the title. Worth 3 points each on paper.
- 1.
🌰🔥
Answer: The Christmas Song (Nat King Cole), from "chestnuts roasting on an open fire". Accept Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. Decoys: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
- 2.
⏮️🎄 ❤️🎁 💔
Answer: Last Christmas (Wham!), from "last Christmas I gave you my heart". Decoys: Blue Christmas, Lonely This Christmas, All I Want for Christmas Is You.
- 3.
😃🎄 ⚔️🔚
Answer: Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (John Lennon and Yoko Ono). Decoys: Do They Know It's Christmas?, Stop the Cavalry, Merry Xmas Everybody.
- 4.
🔝🤩⏰📅
Answer: It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Andy Williams). Decoys: Wonderful Christmastime, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, A Holly Jolly Christmas.
- 5.
🫵😄🤏🎄
Answer: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Judy Garland). Decoys: We Wish You a Merry Christmas, A Holly Jolly Christmas, Little Saint Nick.
- 6.
🇪🇸😃🎄
Answer: Feliz Navidad (José Feliciano). Happy Christmas, in Spanish. Decoys: Mele Kalikimaka, Happy Xmas (War Is Over), We Wish You a Merry Christmas.
- 7.
👵💥🦌
Answer: Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (Elmo & Patsy). Decoys: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Run Rudolph Run, Here Comes Santa Claus.
- 8.
👀👩💋🎅
Answer: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (Jimmy Boyd). Decoys: Santa Baby, Here Comes Santa Claus, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.
Play the tiers in order. Easy first is not kindness, it is teaching: by clue eight everyone has learned that each emoji is a word, and the medium round only works once they have.
Never read the clues aloud
The obvious way to run this for a room is to read the clues out, and it is the one way that does not work. Saying "red circle, nose, deer" hands over the answer, and so does any description you improvise to avoid that. An emoji clue is a picture puzzle: it has to be seen.
That leaves three ways to run it.
- Paper: one sheet per team, everyone guesses at once. Best for a table of mixed ages.
- One phone held up: fine for four people on a sofa, useless for twelve.
- The TV: one clue at a time, everyone answering together. Best for anything bigger than a table.
The printable version
Copy the 24 clues into a document, numbered, with nothing but the emoji and a blank line next to each. Put the answers on a separate page that stays with you. One sheet per team of two to four, 10 minutes on a timer, then swap sheets and mark each other's while you read the answers.
Print in colour, or three clues stop working
⬜🎄, 🥈🔔 and 🔴👃🦌 depend on colour. A black-and-white printer turns the white square, the silver medal and the red circle into the same grey blobs, and nobody gets White Christmas. Print in colour, or write the colour word under those three.
Score the tiers 1, 2 and 3 points. Flat scoring means the hard round barely matters, and the team that only knows the easy ones wins by default.
Running it on the TV, with phones as answer pads
On a screen the quiz becomes multiple choice: the emoji clue goes up, three or four song titles sit under it, and everyone taps an answer on their phone. That is why every answer above comes with three decoys. Each decoy is a real Christmas song that shares something with the clue, so a guess is a gamble and not a giveaway. 🥈🔔 against three other songs with bells in the title makes people read the medal.
In PardyTime that is the classic quiz format. The emoji go in the clue text as typed characters, so they render sharp on any screen. Players join from their phones with a PIN, with no app or account, and a free game takes up to 15 phones, so a bigger family pairs up. Set a 20 or 30 second timer and correct answers earn a speed bonus. Turn the timer off if grandparents are playing, and every correct answer scores the same.
PardyTime also has a picture quiz mode, where a photo starts as a coarse mosaic and sharpens over three stages while players type guesses. It is the wrong tool here: it needs a photo, and a row of five emoji shrunk to an eight-pixel mosaic is a smudge until the reveal. Use the classic format.
Running this at work rather than at home? The office Christmas quiz questions guide has four rounds and a run sheet, and these clues drop in as its music round.
Put it on the big screen
Paper works and costs nothing, but you spend the round marking sheets. On the TV, the marking, the scoring and the reveal happen on their own, and the clue appears for everyone at once, so the fast reader at the end of the table stops shouting answers. Build it with a free trivia maker: one question per clue, the emoji as the question, the answer and the three decoys as the options. Then take a quick look at the public library for a round to play after it.