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It’s that time of year again when half the country is pulling tangled lights out of a box and pretending it’s all part of the fun. Honestly, we all know the feeling. While everyone’s busy turning their living rooms into something festive, Jolly Christmas lets you do a quieter version of the same thing at the table. No pine needles, no arguing about where the good ornaments went, just a small card game where you build your own Christmas tree over fourteen rounds.
The idea is simple. You draft decoration cards, place them into a growing tree, and try to line things up well enough that your ornaments and lights score at the end. It’s light, quick and familiar, and it sits nicely in that space between “family-friendly” and “I still want something to think about for fifteen minutes.” Let’s get into it.
👥 2-5 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 20 minutes
📝 Designers: Seppe Van Ael
🎨 Artwork: Kit Markova
🏢 Publisher: Jolly Dutch (review copy provided)
Gameplay overview
Everyone starts with an elf card. That little helper tells you two things each round: which decoration you’ll take and when you get to act next time. A row of decoration cards sits along numbered spaces, and tree toppers are waiting off to the side until the end of the game.
A round works like this. First, players place their elf next to one of the open decoration cards. In the first round this goes clockwise. After that, turn order depends on where your elf ended up the previous round. When you place your elf, you put it on the opposite side of the row compared to last time. It feels a bit odd the first round, but you get used to it quickly.
Next, everyone takes the decoration they claimed and adds it to their tree. Cards must touch something you already placed, unless it’s your very first one. You can build left, right or upwards on top of two cards. The finished tree will be five cards wide at the bottom, then four, three and two, with a space on top where the final tree topper will cover the top two cards. Ornament types each have their own scoring behaviour, and light segments line up to form complete lights, which matter more than they seem at first.
At the end of the round the one card nobody took goes to the discard pile, the row refills, and you continue like that for fourteen rounds.
When everyone has placed fourteen cards, the tree toppers finally come into play. The order in which players pick a topper depends on how many complete lights they finished. If there’s a tie, the turn order from the last round decides it. The topper sits across the top two cards and gives bonus points if you match its condition, which might be based on ornament types, positions or lights.
Then you score your tree. You add up your complete lights, then the points from your ornaments, and then whatever your topper gives you if you matched its requirement. Whoever did the best decorating job wins.
Artwork, components and visual design
The game is just cards. A stack of decorations, a few toppers, some elves and the order cards. It’s all bright and festive without going over the top. The decoration cards show thick green branches, and when you place them together, they do line up into a pretty convincing tree. The ornaments stand out clearly. You’ll see Santas, bells, gingerbread men, snowflakes, reindeer and Christmas balls, each with simple icons at the bottom that tell you how they score.
All cards have little light halves on their edges. When two cards line up just right, those halves click together into a complete light. It’s a tiny thing, but honestly it’s pretty nice when it lines up. The toppers have big yellow stars with their scoring condition printed right there, so you don’t forget what you were planning. The elf cards are colourful, and the green striped order cards make the drafting row easy to read.
In the end you get a tidy little tree on the table. It won’t replace a real Christmas tree in your house of course, but at least this one doesn’t shed needles everywhere.
Our experience
Honestly, the game was straightforward to learn. We were up and running in minutes, and most plays stayed well within that fifteen to twenty-minute range. That’s helpful if you’re playing with people who don’t touch many board games or if everyone’s half distracted by holiday snacks.
We got into the game flow pretty fast. Place elf, take card, add it to the tree. After a round or two, no one had to think about the structure anymore and the game just flowed. The tree shape gives you a clear target and you start thinking a bit more about where everything will fit. You can’t just put cards anywhere, so you pay more attention to which ornament fits where long before the tree is finished.
Specialisation happens naturally. Someone leans into reindeer, someone else ends up in a Santa race, and someone quietly collects Christmas balls hoping it pays off later. When two players chase the same thing, turn order starts to matter a lot. Sometimes you take a slightly worse card just to go first next round. It’s not the kind of game where you overthink every move, but timing does make a difference.
Lights also surprised us a bit. At first we treated them as small extras, but they end up deciding who picks the topper first, which can be quite important. A good topper can save a messy tree, and a bad one can leave you wishing you’d paid more attention to your bulbs.
Something people may or may not like is how luck plays into it. Sometimes the card you really need never appears or appears at the wrong moment. It’s a short filler though, so we didn’t expect perfect control. Still, it’s worth mentioning for anyone who prefers tight, predictable puzzles.
We had a pleasant time with it. It’s light, festive and easy to bring out with mixed groups, especially around December when no one wants to think too hard anyway.
Our thoughts
Jolly Christmas is very much a light drafting and set collection game. Let’s be real, the core system isn’t new, but the fixed tree shape and the different ornament scoring rules make it feel a bit more interesting than you’d expect from a short game.
Each ornament type works differently, so you’re managing several tiny scoring challenges at once. Reindeer grow stronger as the group gets bigger. Santas turn into a majority contest. Snowflakes want isolation. Bells need two different ornaments underneath them. Christmas balls reward varied sets. Gingerbread men slowly ramp up until they hit a cap. You don’t have to collect everything, and honestly you shouldn’t try, but picking two or three to focus on helps the game click.
Turn order is more important than it first appears. Choosing a card because of where it sits rather than what it does happens more often than you’d expect. Better players will watch what others are building and anticipate where the competition will be.
The toppers bring a nice final twist. They reward you for things you may already be doing or point you toward a small late-game adjustment. And because the lights decide who chooses first, they turn out to play a bigger role than they seem to at the start. It stops the last rounds from feeling like you’re just going through the motions.
If there’s something to be critical about, it’s that the game won’t satisfy players looking for deeper decision-making. Moves can feel obvious, and sometimes the card row simply isn’t kind. But if you treat it as a seasonal filler, it honestly works very well for what it tries to do.
Taken together, Jolly Christmas feels like a cosy holiday game that knows its place. It’s friendly, short and easy to bring out with almost anyone. If you enjoy small drafting games and appreciate games that keep things straightforward, it’s a nice one to play during the festive season. Merry Christmas.
📝 We received a copy of the game from Jolly Dutch.
