Office Holiday Party Ideas and Trends

Christmas is a great time to celebrate a successful year with your staff and reward them for all their hard work. This is where the annual office Christmas party comes in. It’s something that your team looks forward to!

While we all love to celebrate, office parties now need to take into account remote workers, employee’s families (including fur babies), and ways to be inclusive.

We’re sharing fun ideas for in person, hybrid, and remote office parties to get everyone in the holiday spirit!

What about gifts?

In addition to thinking about how you’ll celebrate, you should think about a token of appreciation to give them.

This year, Festively has created five unique holiday boxes to match various personalities, including:

• the ultimate family person
• the person who goes the extra mile
• the person who loves to entertain
• the person looking forward to quality time
• the person who deserves a big thank you

Check out our curated a holiday gift guide with unique gift ideas for your hardworking team members:

Ideas for Hybrid (online & in-person) Celebrations

Have a gingerbread House making party

A fun activity that everyone can get into is Gingerbread House making. Back in the day, that meant you had to find all the supplies and divvy them out individually. Now, Target has come to the rescue!

You can buy gingerbread houses for those participating in the office, and ship gingerbread houses to those participating remotely. And there are so many options! Here are just a few:

How to make it fun:

• Give everyone 30 minutes to complete their gingerbread houses.
• While everyone is creating their houses, run a slideshow of moments from the year set to holiday music.
• When 30 minutes is done, have each participant take a picture of their gingerbread house and send it to a designated person on the team. That person will upload all the photos to a powerpoint side while everyone takes a 5 minute break.
• Another designated person will create an online poll and allow everyone to vote for their favorite gingerbread house.
• Show all the gingerbread houses on screen and give everyone a good laugh.
• The winner gets bragging rights for the year.

Have a holiday cookie decorating party

This is a similar to gingerbread house making party, but instead of houses, decorate cookies. Festively can partner with a local baker like Jasmine’s creations to help you create a fun activity! We’ll help with logistics to get all the items to folks prior to the event so everyone is ready before the party.

Then Jasmine can lead a live cookie decorating demonstration in person or online and teach everyone secrets of cookie decorating.

This is a great option if your remote team would like to participate with their families, and an in person team who wants to work as a team.

Host a charcuterie making class

Charcuterie making is a great option because it doesn’t require actual cooking, and it can also serve as lunch for your team.

You can partner with a local charcuterie maker like the Crafty Boss Lady (or Festively can help connect you with one local to your area.) They can give your team a list of items to purchase from the grocery store.

Give your team members a budget and have them go shopping before the event, or give them an Instacart gift card so they can have their groceries delivered to their home or the office.

The team can follow along and learn from the Charcuterie maker, and enjoy a tasty experience.

Good for In-Person (at a home or the office) Celebrations

Host a painting party

For a creative and festively good time, consider a painting party. A painting party company, like Paint me a Party will provide all the necessary painting supplies for you to have a great painting party. They will set everything up, instruct the class step-by-step to create their own masterpiece and do all the clean-up.

Add your own ‘sip’ (whether that’s wine or a hot cocoa bar), and your team will have a blast.

Everyone bring a…

This is the newest spin on the traditional pot luck! You can set the theme and everyone goes along with it for the fun.

For example, you can say “Everyone bring a themed food board”, means they should bring a board with a variety of that type of food. The types can be anything you want, such an Italian food board, a Chinese food board, a dessert board, etc.

Another idea is “Everyone bring a dish that starts with your first name”. For example, Iris can bring Ice Cream, Patty can bring Pasta.

Host a nice dinner in

Treat your team to an extra special dinner in. Have one of Festively’s talented caterers like Chef Chivitas or Chef Tiffany create a custom menu with a variety of everyone’s favorite dishes. You won’t have to fight for parking like at a restaurant, folks can get seconds, and everyone can enjoy the experience as long as they’d like.

You may want to consider hiring a bartender for the experience as well. Consider one of Festively’s talented bartenders such as Awas y Mas, or Sip and Savor bartending. They will make your guests feel like royalty.

Play Karaoke

Karaoke can be a fun group activity for a holiday party. Don’t think you have to stick to only Holiday songs! Let the group pick whatever songs they want.

Even though folks might be shy at first, you’ll be surprised how much they let their hair down after a few songs.

If you don’t already have a good speaker, or need someone to help connect the TV and speaker, let us know! Festively can connect you with a local DJ who can help set up the space for your party.

Host a cooking class

Whether it be grilling or fine dining, cooking and enjoying dinner together is a fantastic idea for a group. Who doesn’t like food? Book a local caterer (or ask Festively for help finding one) who can create an onsite cooking experience.

Your team will split into groups to prepare different elements of the dish. The end result is everyone coming together and enjoying a meal together.  

Play games

Whether its giant jenga, a classic game or the newest one, games help mix groups up and keep people laughing.

Check out this list of fun Holiday games for your next gathering.

Good for In-Person (Offsite) Celebrations

Go to a nice lunch or dinner

You can’t go wrong with taking the team to lunch or dinner. Try to find a place that is already decorated nicely for the holidays. Also, try to take into account where everyone is traveling from and select a location that is good for most.

We’ve created this list of some of the most festively decorated restaurants to help you pick.

You can also bring the decor to a favorite local restaurant! We decked out the entire patio of La Guelaguetza restaurant in Korea Town with holiday decor for a fun holiday experience. Festively can help bring the decor to your favorite restaurant as well!

Let off some steam

These ideas get folks out of the office and in an environment where they can have some fun together. Most places either have a room you can reserve or a way to buy out the space, giving your group an opportunity to connect before or after the activities.

• Top Golf
• Ax throwing
• Bowling
• Escape Room

Have a big party

Sometimes you want to go all out! This is a great option when your team had an awesome year and you want to curate the entire experience.

Ideally, you have someone on the team who volunteers to help with the planning. BUT that person will likely not get to enjoy themselves because they will be busy taking care of all the details. This is when you should consider hiring help.

Festively can connect you with fantastic party vendors, starting with a venue, decorator, bartender, caterer, entertainment (even a Santa), a DJ, and all the extras. We’ll always recommend an event planner to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Good for Online Celebrations

For online celebrations, you have to work a little harder to keep everyone engaged. Here are a few tips that relate to all online parties:

• Make sure you have an online ‘host’ to ask the questions, assign points, add fun commentary, and keep everyone engaged.
• Encourage everyone to dress up. Whether that’s in festive attire, an ugly holiday sweater, or whatever theme you have for your party
• Give points for participation. You can give a point for turning the camera on, dressing up, and adding a fun holiday zoom background. This helps encourage engagement from everyone.

Holiday trivia

Hosting an online party can be tricky. You want to make sure everyone is engaged and feels connected. A fun way to do this is by hosting an online trivia game.

Use one of Jeopardy Labs pre-built trivia games, or use the free tool to create your own trivia.

Baking/Charcuterie class

Similar to the hybrid experience, you can host an entirely online baking class or charcuterie class entirely online. The concept is the same (see above), and the group will enjoy munching and creating at the same time.

Scavenger Hunt

Since everyone is at home, a scavenger hunt can be a fun and hilarious game to play with the group. Break people into teams and give them a list of items to find. Have them come back with the item and show it on camera.

This site has some fun online scavenger hunt ideas.

Wine/Tequila/Whiskey/Beer tasting class

Everyone is already home, why not send them a flight of wine, tequila or whiskey, which can also serve as an early holiday gift?

Festively can help you find an expert in these spirits to help facilitate the tasting. We have a wonderful network of professionals who can coordinate and lead this online experience.

Overall, holiday celebrations are a wonderful time to show appreciation for a team that has accomplished so much this past year. As long as your appreciation is sincere and heartfelt, you can’t go wrong!