The festive season can be pretty monotonous at times. If endless reruns of films you would never usually watch and soap specials don’t get you, then there is always the threat of a gloomy walk with the family or — even worse — charades.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. The web can open a whole new world of online activities that put the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special to shame and can entertain every member of the family in ways that just a few years ago would have been unimaginable.

1 ONLINE EVENTS Doctor Who is the highlight of television this Christmas but if an intergalactic Time Lord in a police box is too far-fetched, follow a fat guy on a round-the-world-in-a-night mission with reindeer instead. Norad (North American Aerospace Defence Command) takes time away from national air surveillance to track Santa on Christmas Eve at www.noradsanta.org/en/. The children will be so entranced they’ll almost forget to leave out the carrots and cocoa.

For those seeking a musical event that goes beyond the paltry offerings of the Top of the Pops Christmas special, head to www.fabchannel.com. Here you can find a host of concerts recorded in Amsterdam venues to watch at your leisure. Acts range from Echo and the Bunnymen to Arcade Fire, which beats Girls Aloud every time.

Stille Nacht Square in Oberndorf bei Salzburg is (probably) the place where Silent Night was first performed, and every year they mark the occasion with a ceremony and performance. Follow it live from 4pm today www.stillenacht.info/en/kapelle/e_webcam.asp.

If British television channels seem too limited check www.wwitv.com/portal which makes it easy to compare dozens of stations worldwide listed by country. The “government television with diversified programmes” from Venezolana de TV won’t detain you long, but France’s Astro Center (astrology channel) will test your French.

2 PLACES TO VISIT

Leaving the house for a breath of fresh air is never a bad idea — but where to go over the Christmas break? The 24 Hour Museum (www.24hourmuseum.org.uk) contains listings for hundreds of themed trails, walks, lectures and gallery events across the country.

Even better, simply type your demands into the “what’s on” search engine (where you are, what sort of things you want to do) and the site will find the perfect outing. You may like to indulge your inner Bond and take the Casino Royale themed trail, which takes you from memorable cold war sites in London to various spy exhibitions.

At www.tinyurl.com/yhvy2g there is a rundown of suggested activities for the 12 days of Christmas in London, beginning tomorrow with watching the foolhardy dive into the Serpentine at 9am. www.evanevans.co.uk/festive-tours.htm brims with ideas, including trips to Leeds Castle, Warwick Castle and the Cotswolds. Prices are from roughly £60-£90.

If leaving the house proves too much you can take online virtual tours at www.vrmag.org, which contains stunning panoramic 3-D images of everything from Mount Fuji to St Paul’s Cathedral.

3 GAMES TO PLAY ONLINE

You could escape Christmas altogether by becoming part of the online virtual world at www.secondlife.com. Once you have chosen your digital character — known as an avatar — you can socialise, buy and sell virtual land and even build yourself a new home. The site’s owners claim Second Life has a population of 2m inhabitants from across the globe.

If assuming an online alter ego is too spooky, you can waste a happy half an hour catapulting cartoon penguins over the ice at www.miniclip.com/games/en. While you’re here, don’t forget to give the prime minister a workout at Blair the Motivator and see how he grunts.

Whole programmes, indeed whole series of programmes, will slip past while you move building blocks to match pictures at the addictive stackopolis.com, and if you need your Sudoko fix, see number-logic.com, where games are ranked from easy to impossible and new, handcrafted torment is added every day. Not only are you having fun, but you are improving your mind. How many TV programmes can you say that about?

4 FAMILY FUN

Derren Brown, the illusionist, will be on Channel 4 this Christmas but you can learn how to do your own magic at www.videojug.com, a site which, with video clips, seeks to explain almost everything you could possibly want to do. Read someone’s mind with a deck of cards? Easy. It can also teach you how to juggle and whip a tablecloth from a laid dinner table. Just think how much a trick like that could please your Christmas host (top tip: pull down, not up).

This is the season to give the family silly things to do — something they entirely understand at www.eventwise.co.uk/asp/partyanimals.asp, which contains a huge number of suggestions for party games. These are grouped by style (“A Bit Mad”), age groups (one up to adult) and includes Rude Scrabble (any word can be considered rude if you can convince everyone else it can be used in a rude way) and Secrets — everyone writes down a secret, then other people guess whose secret is whose. Instant ice breaker or what?

5 SHEER ENTERTAINMENT

Christmas is as much about a good book as good television, and the delightfully named www.bookslut.com is a colourful monthly web magazine that gives the lowdown on new book releases, along with news, reviews and features. It also includes accessible archives that go back to 2002. In the current issue Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep, talks about how isolation is the key to gothic novels.

If you want a shortcut to things of interest online, www.9.yahoo.com searches the best of the web so you don’t have to. In a video clip, an American MTV-style presenter called Maria Sansone runs through a daily pick of nine great sites.

If you’ve ever wondered about the veracity of urban legends such as cursed cars or the druggy origins of Coca-Cola, then www.snopes.com is the place to go. This fascinating, encyclopedic site takes a subject such as the Titanic and rates how true parts of the story are (the orchestra stayed until the last — yes; there was a cursed mummy in the hold — no).

All of which would go down well with the renowned fact checkers of the newyorker.com. The venerable magazine has now reproduced its distinctive mix of long features and brilliant illustrations online. Avoid the annoying pop-up ads and treat yourself to insightful and topical pieces such as Why Publishers Love the Bible (clue: in 2005 it outsold Harry Potter by two to one).