Some of the best known Christmas games provide hours of entertainment during countless family Christmas get-togethers. These are the games played by the various sports teams; they feature the Christmas games that are watched by millions of TV viewers.  In December of 2005 there will be four televised Christmas games that include professional teams. Two of those games can be found on the National Football League (NFL) schedule, and another two appear on the schedule of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Although the NFL has scheduled 13 games for the day before Christmas, Saturday, December 24th, it has not scheduled any games for Christmas Eve, and only two games for the evening of Christmas day. On December 25, 2005 the team from Chicago will face the team from Green Bay at the stadium in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Minnesota and Baltimore teams will come face to face in the second of the NFL's two scheduled Christmas games.

Greater TV viewer anticipation surrounds the Christmas games scheduled by the NBA. The Pistons and the Pacers, the two teams that once drew national attention for their unsportsmanlike conduct, will be challenged to behave during the early afternoon hours of December 25th.  A second game scheduled for later in the afternoon has drawn the largest amount of public attention. That game will put Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers on the same court as Shaquille O'Neal and the Miami Heat.

For those not interested in sports, local history can occasionally help to create some interesting Xmas events. Bucks County, Pennsylvania has one such Christmas event.

It is actually an annual commemoration of the prelude to an important historic battle. It focuses on a time when few of the citizens of Pennsylvania had given thought to Christmas games.

For the brave souls who brave the cold temperatures of a Pennsylvania Christmas, this event dramatizes the crossing of the Delaware River by General George Washington and his men. This daring crossing allowed Washington to surprise the British and the Hessian soldiers then camped outside of Trenton, New Jersey.

Although no other Xmas events in Bucks County matches the uniqueness of that dramatization at Washington's Crossing, one pre-Christmas event in central Bucks County has ranked among those events with the most unusual offerings.  This has been a musical presented annually at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  While carolers have performed at this event, members of the audience have had a chance to inspect the objects that might have been used in former Christmas games.

Inside Mercer Museum are many of the household goods, the kitchen equipment and the medical supplies of colonial America. In fact, as one ascends the slowly rising concrete floor of the Museum, one finds reminders of the most unusual aspects of life in the original 13 colonies.  At the top of the Museum sits something that remains far removed from any Christmas games. It is an old gallows, a structure that was once used for public hangings.