The FIFA 17 Christmas event called FUTmas begins, granting players additional squad building challenges, mystery packs, and more!

FUTmas is back for FIFA 17 players this year, a celebration that gives away plenty of FIFA Ultimate Team gifts for those who check in during the holiday season. EA Sports had confirmed the return of the annual holiday festivities last week, which allows FIFA 17 players new and old access to several new challenges, mystery packs, and special tournaments.

From December 16-25, players can take part in daily squad building challenges which shine a focus on players who wear shirt numbers that correspond to the calendar day. The squad building challenges will also reward players with some festive mystery packs between December 25 to the 27th, and both the Daily Tournaments and Weekend League Qualifiers will drop their respective squad requirements until December 28th, which gives gamers who get the game for Christmas a few days to immediately jump into things before FUTmas wraps up.

The FIFA Ultimate Team mode has remained one of the most popular elements of the franchise as a whole, although some free pro-LGBQT content for the game mode recently found EA Sports Canada to be at odds with some Russian parliamentarians. It's been a heavy year for FIFA-related drama, as the company was also the victim of a multi-million dollar FIFA coin fraud scam that resulted in an FBI fraud investigation that brought several nefarious hackers to court.

Thankfully, it looks like the holidays will bring some comparatively drama-free weeks to FIFA 17 gamers. While the franchise still has its usual amount of glitches and questionable AI, this year's iteration introduced a new single player story mode that made the game an overall success. Now that EA Sports has tested the water with some English League focused storytelling, gamers may be able to truly trot around the globe in FIFA 18, which will presumably expand upon EA's latest experiment.

Whether players are dabbing on a snow-filled pitch or just grinding away to get skill points, it looks like there's no better time than the holidays to fire up FIFA 17 and lead an ultimate team to glory in a virtual land where Brexit won't affect any contracts in the coming years. The more light-hearted FIFA 17 Manager Mode doesn't touch base on the intricacies of UK permits either, so any gamers hoping to test their management mettle with that issue had better hope that Football Manager 2017 also finds its way under their Christmas tree.

Are you still playing FIFA 17, Ranters? Will you be participating in FUTmas?

FIFA 17 is available now for PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, and PS4.