A Christmas tombola works on donated prizes: families and local businesses give bottles, chocolates, toiletries and toys, each prize gets a winning ticket, and the winning tickets are folded in among many blank ones. The Christmas prizes people most like to win are the ones that make good presents, such as selection boxes, festive food, bottles, candles, games and small hampers.
In This Guide
Kinds of Christmas tombola
- A bottle tombola. Wine, soft drinks, bubble bath and sauces, all in bottles, for an adult table. Keep it apart from the children's games and check who is buying.
- A chocolate tombola. Selection boxes, chocolate coins and tins of sweets. Always popular with children, and easy to collect.
- A jar tombola. Jam jars filled with sweets, small toys, hair bobbles or craft bits, collected from families. Every jar is a prize, so this one is often all winners.
- A children's tombola. Small toys, stationery and books, priced for pocket money.
- A hamper table. A few larger prizes put together from smaller donations, shown off on the table to draw people over.
Christmas prize ideas
For the tombola table
- Selection boxes, advent calendars and chocolate coins
- Mince pies, Christmas puddings and boxes of biscuits
- Christmas crackers and rolls of wrapping paper
- Candles, bath sets and hand cream
- Board games, jigsaws and packs of cards
- Christmas mugs, tea towels and tree decorations
- Bottles for the adult table
For bigger prizes and the raffle
- A Christmas hamper made up from donated food and drink
- A Christmas tree, delivered, from a local nursery
- Vouchers from local restaurants, cafés and shops
- A family day out, donated by a local attraction
- A class or school-made item, such as a painted plate or a quilt
Bigger prizes usually sell raffle tickets better than they fill a tombola. A Christmas raffle poster that shows them off, and printed Christmas raffle tickets, turn them into a raffle alongside the tombola.
Collecting prizes
- Ask families by class. Giving each class one kind of prize, such as bottles for one class and chocolate for another, fills every part of the table and gives children something to talk about.
- Run a non-uniform day. Children come in their own clothes in return for bringing a tombola prize.
- Ask local businesses. Shops, cafés and trades often give a prize or a voucher, especially when they are thanked by name. Our guide to sourcing prizes and sponsorship covers how to ask.
- Start early. Put the request out in the first weeks of the autumn term, so prizes arrive before December.
Setting up the tombola stall
- Number the prizes and the winning tickets together. Stick a number on each prize and put the same number on its winning ticket, so there is no argument about which ticket wins what.
- Fold every ticket the same way. Winning and blank tickets should look the same in the drum or the bucket.
- Put the best prizes where people can see them. A table that looks full draws people in.
- Label the stall. A stall sign from the Stubbs design studio says what it is and what a go costs, and matches the rest of your fair.
For the rules on running a tombola, see our guide to tombolas. For games to run alongside the tombola, see Christmas fair games, and for the bigger picture, our Christmas fundraising ideas.