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Christmas word search

Build your own, or take one of six ready-made festive sheets.

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Your puzzle

Where the words come from
Kind of puzzle
36 themes, grouped by kind.
4 to 25 from this theme
Print size
10 to 20 squares
Border
Answer key
Raise this to put a different one on every page.
Up to 40 characters, printed on the sheet and its answer key. Leave it empty for the title shown.
Your word search

Christmas Word Search

  • MISTLETOE
  • PACKAGE
  • CANDLE
  • JINGLE
  • PRESENT
  • SLEIGH
  • COCOA
  • SNOWFLAKE
  • EGGNOG
  • NUTMEG
  • LANTERN
  • WREATH

Created for free at puzzleandprint.com

Christmas Word Search, Answer Key

  • MISTLETOE
  • PACKAGE
  • CANDLE
  • JINGLE
  • PRESENT
  • SLEIGH
  • COCOA
  • SNOWFLAKE
  • EGGNOG
  • NUTMEG
  • LANTERN
  • WREATH

Created for free at puzzleandprint.com

Or take one that is already made

Six sheets, each with a different job. Every one is a two-page PDF, the puzzle, then the answer key on its own page.

Christmas word search printable, for kids: 10 by 10 grid, 6 words, easy, across and down onlyChristmas word search, for kids10 × 10 · 6 words · Easy, across and down onlyDownload PDF ↓Christmas word search printable, large print: 11 by 11 grid, 7 words, easy, across and down onlyChristmas word search, large print11 × 11 · 7 words · Easy, across and down onlyDownload PDF ↓Christmas word search printable, easy: 13 by 13 grid, 10 words, across and down onlyChristmas word search, easy13 × 13 · 10 words · Easy, across and down onlyDownload PDF ↓Christmas word search printable, everyday: 14 by 14 grid, 11 words, medium, adds diagonalsChristmas word search, everyday14 × 14 · 11 words · Medium, adds diagonalsDownload PDF ↓Christmas word search printable, more words: 15 by 15 grid, 14 words, medium, adds diagonalsChristmas word search, more words15 × 15 · 14 words · Medium, adds diagonalsDownload PDF ↓Christmas word search printable, hard, for adults: 17 by 17 grid, 15 words, adds backwards wordsChristmas word search, hard, for adults17 × 17 · 15 words · Hard, adds backwards wordsDownload PDF ↓

Every sheet here is free to print as often as you like. If one saved you time, the tip jar is on Ko-fi.

December has a lot of gaps in it that need filling, the last week before winter break when nobody is learning anything, the long afternoon at a relative's house, the hour before dinner is ready. A Christmas word search covers those gaps without a screen and without much explaining, which is most of why they endure.

There are six ready-made sheets, each with a different job. For kids is a ten by ten grid, the roomiest of the six, with six short words of four and five letters that run only across and down. Large print is an eleven by eleven with seven words of five to nine letters, also across and down only. Easy is a thirteen by thirteen with ten words and still no diagonals. Everyday is a fourteen by fourteen with eleven words that adds diagonals, and it is the one to print for a class. More words keeps the diagonals and stretches the list to fourteen. The hard sheet for adults is a seventeen by seventeen with fifteen words, and the only one that lets words run backwards, so it also suits older solvers who find the others too quick.

For a class party or a table of relatives, printing two or three different sheets rather than thirty copies of one keeps people from simply reading over a neighbor's shoulder. The answer keys print separately, so you can hand out puzzles and keep the answers in your pocket.

Nothing here is tied to a brand or a film, so the sheets suit a school setting as well as a family one. If you would rather use your own words (a nativity cast list, a family name list, the carols you are actually singing) the maker on this page takes about a minute.

Which Christmas word search words are hardest to spell

The hardest Christmas words to spell are the ones with letters that do not sound the way they look, starting with four that hide a consonant nobody says: the W in WREATH, the GH in SLEIGH, and the T in both MISTLETOE and CHESTNUT. The first three are on the large-print sheet, which makes that sheet easy to search and surprisingly hard to spell, while CHESTNUT waits on the hard sheet for adults. SLEIGH also shares its vowel sound with REINDEER, on the same sheet, spelled EIGH in one and EI in the other. Asking a child to read the seven large-print words aloud and point to any letter they cannot hear takes a minute, and it is a better use of the finished sheet than copying the words out.

C and G cause the rest of the trouble, because each makes two sounds and the list uses both. CANDLE and CAROL start with a hard C, while CINNAMON starts with a soft one that sounds like an S. GARLAND has a hard G, while GINGER has two Gs and both are soft. The rule a child can use is that C and G usually soften before an E, I or Y, and CINNAMON and GINGER both follow it. CINNAMON is also the spelling to check on the More words and hard sheets, with its double N and single M. ICICLE, which only the Easy sheet carries, has one of each: a soft C, then a hard one.

Christmas word search words that are American rather than British

Four words on the Christmas list are American in how they are used, though not in how they are spelled: COOKIES, EGGNOG, ORNAMENT and PACKAGE. In Britain cookies are more often called biscuits, a tree ornament a bauble and a package a parcel, and eggnog is far less common at the table. A child in a British classroom will still find all four on the grid, since a word search only asks them to match letters, but may not know what EGGNOG is. No word on the list is spelled differently on the two sides of the Atlantic, so nothing on the answer key will look wrong to either.

Where those four sit decides which sheet might need a sentence of explanation. The For kids, Large print and Easy sheets have none of them. COOKIES and EGGNOG are on both Everyday and More words, and ORNAMENT and PACKAGE are on the hard sheet only. For a class where the customs are unfamiliar, the maker on this page can rebuild the Everyday list with COOKIES and EGGNOG swapped out. SNOWFLAKE, FIREPLACE, MITTENS and COCOA are good replacements: all four are on the Easy sheet and none is on Everyday, and they mean the same thing in every English-speaking country, so a custom sheet built from them still feels like part of the same set.

Common questions

Is any of this religious?

Very little. Most of the 40 words are about winter, food and decoration, such as TINSEL, WREATH, GARLAND, EGGNOG and COOKIES. CAROL and ANGEL lean most clearly toward the religious side of the season, with STAR arguably a third, and the For kids and Everyday sheets have none of the three, which makes them the safest picks for a classroom that cannot assume a shared holiday.

Which words hold children up?

Usually the short ones, not the long ones. STAR and TOYS are the only four-letter words among the 40 on the Christmas list, and both are on the More words sheet alongside four five-letter words: BELLS, HOLLY, FROST and ANGEL. MISTLETOE and EVERGREEN, at nine letters, run across more than half the width of every grid they are on, which makes them hard to miss. Short words hide in a grid; long ones cannot. That is why the For kids sheet, whose six words are TOYS and five of five letters (HOLLY, FROST, BELLS, FEAST and COCOA), is also the smallest grid here, ten squares a side, with every word running across or down.

Which way do the words run on the hard Christmas word search for adults?

Only four of its fifteen words, NUTMEG, TOYS, WINTER and BELLS, read the ordinary way, from left to right, and two, PACKAGE and TWINKLE, run straight down. CINNAMON, LANTERN and FEAST read from right to left, SPRUCE and ANGEL read upwards, and GINGER, ORNAMENT, EVERGREEN and CHESTNUT climb diagonally.

More questions about the Word Search Maker