I rarely get time to be with family/friends on Christmas, let alone time to play video games.
This year is no different with some extremely large fires occurring interstate that I am likely to be deployed at.

Otherwise... Christmas is just another day... And I would just play whatever game I felt like playing at the time.

I agree with you Pem.  Christmas is just another day to me. In my opinion, it is only for the kids.  After your over the age of 18, it becomes a pain in the ass.

Not only do I consider Christmas as just another day, the same goes for my birthday (after reaching age 21, they are meaningless) as well as

pain in the ass holidays like Thanksgiving, Easter, Halloween, etc.

In fact, the only ones I like are Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day.

I have a few games that I play every December.
It’s typically stuff I grew up with and had memories playing when I was a kid/teen

From December 18-24 I typically play Simpson’s hit and run/road rage, Kirby’s Air Ride, Megaman Anniversary Collection, True Crime New York City, Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 on game cube, and a newer game I would play is watch dogs on Wii U which surprisingly before the shut off would still have people online around that time.

And then From December 15/18-24 I play Metroid Fusion all the way through.

There’s others I try to fit in like Mario galaxy, breath of wild, some of the 2D Mario’s from Wii, etc, but only if I have time lol.

I tend to play games my partner likes to watch me play. Often that's something with an story interesting enough to follow. It's not a tradition per se, but since that's what my partner would like every year (and every holiday, really), I guess in practice it is a bit of a tradition. I don't really care to have things like this as actual traditions, but I don't mind following along either.

My favorite Xmas themed game is Batman Arkham Origins.
Yesterday I played the new Thief fan mission A Very Thiefy Christmas Special, an amazing mission, I highly recommend it. I play Thief fan missions with a controller through Xpadder.

I like to play Hotel Dusk/Last Window these days. They can hardly be considered "Christmas games", but they are set during Christmas and I feel really cozy playing them inside my bed on my NDS xD

Years ago, I enjoyed playing games with my older sister. I have really fond memories of us playing Super Mario Galaxy, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Wario Land: The Shake Dimension. Good times...

This is problematic because one of my two hobbies is observing the skies with my telescope, however I can only do that a handful of times per year (I think I’ve only been out twice this year) because the weather sucks pretty much always, and it needs to be perfect.

I’d actually say this is a lot. But hey.

Anyway I don’t think I really ever have played games during christmas, let alone as a tradition, even back when it actually was my hobby. Maybe in the N64 and Gamecube days I played Mario Kart with my cousins or something. In any case it would have had to be something you played together, something lighthearted and something festive in a way.

When I was studying I started doing a JRPG every January during "exam vacation". Technically still keeping the tradition alive now though a few times I've started halfway into January and finished the game in February. This year I'll probably get a headstart between Christmas and New Year instead.

I usually will pick like one week to set aside where I literally do nothing but play a game. Usually I'll choose a game which I hear ppl saying "this is a one-of-a-kind game". So, for example, two years ago was Majora's Mask & one year ago was The Last of Us: Part I. This year was The Last of Us: Part II, but I dropped the game midway through (b/c i was getting bored to tears) and played through Animal Well instead...which i'm only now realizing should have been worthy of being a genuine GotY competitor. One of the best games I have ever played!

And for the Grandparents. Our kids are visiting with the grandparents this weekend. My wife and I had all day to ourselves yesterday, including 5 hours playing Path of Exile 2 together. The holidays have their silver lining :)

But yeah they're mostly a pita nowadays, especially since my wife doesn't get along her brother's wife, her mother and father are usually fighting. I don't have bonds with my family anymore, 6,000 km away. The holidays are generally just more stress.


@Farsala Thanks again for the tip. We started the game yesterday afternoon, played until 9 pm straight, eating dinner on the couch while in 'town'. Gameplay is excellent, just what we were looking for and it looks like it will be fun for a long time.

That skill tree alone!


After 5 hours, we're still at 0% according to the dashboard lol. I'm playing as a Monk, my wife is the Warrior.


Only minor gripes, you can adjust about everything in the game but the font size, so we had to adjust the couch position... Also character names have to be unique worldwide ugh. My old Everquest character name worked, my wife's were all taken :( It's also all rather overwhelming at first, so many options, systems, button configurations. The game doesn't ease you in at all and I had to look up basic controls online that it simply stepped over. (We got stuck with the map overlay on screen, no idea how to get it to go away again lol). Plus we kept repeatedly dying on the first mini boss.

Yet after we got into a bit, it's all good, very well designed. Inventory could be a bit bigger, but you can always portal back to town to sell loot (and portal sraight back again) Not that that's really necessary, you find better stuff anyway. Maybe when the blacksmith becomes available.

It's a rather dark game though, can't play it now with the blue (-16c) skies. Guess we'll have to do chores first :/ (wrap Christmas presents for the kids bleh)