32 Virtual Holiday Party Ideas, Games and Tips for 2023
Virtual holiday parties are the perfect way to bring together your co-workers, friends or family members - even while you’re apart. Check out our definitive guide to organizing a fun and memorable party in 2023 below, including 6 tips for a fun event, 6 theme ideas, and 15 activities and games!
What is a virtual holiday party?
A virtual holiday party is any online gathering that brings together your co-workers , friends, or family members to celebrate the holiday season in a remote setting. While the holidays can be an excuse to just do a Zoom call, a true virtual holiday party typically involves interactive elements such as games, activities or other shared experiences, often facilitated by an online tool or platform. Participants can join the party remotely from their respective locations (via their computers, phones or tablets), using popular video call tools like Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams. Once everyone is there, the party organizer you can kick off the festivities.
These virtual gatherings can include various components, and as the party organizer you can decide how many you want to include. These can include games, activities, themes - any way to create a fun and interactive shared experience with your group. The ultimate goal is to create the festive and joyous atmosphere typically experienced at in-person holiday celebrations, all from the comfort of your respective homes.
Virtual holiday parties have gained in popularity over the past few years, due to their incredible flexibility and inclusivity. With many companies offering employees the ability to work remote or hybrid long-term, many teams are made up of people from different locations and time zones. But company culture is important, and one of the mainstay events of many companies is the “Office Holiday party”. For those that don’t want to miss out on the bonding and year-end morale boost for their employees, a virtual holiday party can be the perfect way to continue your traditions.
Why should I throw a virtual party?
There are a whole bunch of reasons you may not be able to get your favorite group together this holiday season. Maybe you’re part of a remote team and all your coworkers no longer go into the same office. Maybe you’ve moved across the country far from friends and family. Or maybe everyone is just so darn busy this time of year! But that doesn’t mean you don’t want to still enjoy the most wonderful time of the year with those you love, or - in the case of coworkers - those you’d love to blow off some steam with!
Virtual holiday parties offer an alternative way to maintain traditions, foster a sense of community, and spread holiday cheer.
When should I throw my party?
This is a great question! With Christmas on December 25th, and New Year’s Eve just a week later, most people will schedule their holiday party a week or two before Christmas. This helps ensure that everyone will be available to join, since many people may travel at the end of the year, or have other parties or obligations to attend to. If you’re scheduling a virtual Christmas party with your family, by all means: do it on Christmas or Christmas Eve! But if you’re hosting a get-together for friends, or helping organize your office holiday party, you’ll need to be a little more deliberate.
Fortunately, we at White Elephant Online actually have looked at this question in detail! For the past couple years, we’ve analyzed the data from thousands of White Elephant games on our platform to determine all sorts of fun facts about people’s holiday party habits. Here’s what we found about when people hold their virtual holiday celebrations:
Most popular days overall
The most popular week for a corporate holiday party was the week before the week of Christmas accounting for 58% of corporate games. For 2023, that would mean the week of December 11 - 15.
The most popular time for friends & familes - if not on Christmas or Christmas Eve - was the Friday before Christmas.
But of course - talk to your group and schedule whatever works best for them! (You can find the full 2022 Gift Exchange Report Here).
How to host a virtual holiday party
In many ways, planning this event will be like planning any other event - but you want to make sure to put in the extra effort to make everyone feel like it was a fun and engaging event. Here are a few steps to planning your party:
1. Determine the Guest List
If it’s your family or friends, this may be straightforward, but if you’re organizing your office holiday party, it may be less so. How large is your company? If you’re a smaller organization, than getting the whole company together may be a great idea! Especially if you’re a remote company, this may be one of the few times you get everyone across all time-zones together.
But if the company is too large, consider holding parties at the department or team level. Alternatively, you can combine the two: have a company-wide event to give executives the opportunity to speak and toast the company’s accomplishments, and then breakout into smaller groups for more interactive activities.
2. Understand the Budget
Is your company footing the bill for the festivities? If so, how much they are forking over can help you determine the type of event you want to run. For example, could you spend money on gifts for the team? On an expensive virtual experience? On sending care-packages to everyone? If not, then you’ll want to consider less expensive options (though that doesn’t mean you can’t still have a great time! You can play White Elephant starting at just $49, or check out our many other great ideas below)
3. Pick a Date & Time
Picking a Date & Time for a company event that works for everyone can sometimes be a minefield. Here are a few tips to make it easier:
Schedule far in advance. The best way to avoid a million conflicts is to schedule it a couple months in advance. This is especially important for company or large department gatherings; if it’s just you and your team of a dozen you can likely be more flexible.
Do it during the week - Thursday & Friday are the most popular days. (See above for more details).
Do it during work hours. If you want maximum engagement, don’t make employees choose between a company event and their family, friends or other obligations. It’s often fun to do it towards the end of the day, so your team gets a shorter day, and an hour or two of fun at the end.
If calendars are conflicting too much, propose 1-3 times to the group and see which work for the most people. People can often move other meetings to make room for a company event if given enough notice.
If you’re running into trouble, see if you can get help from a higher up. If the department head or CEO think this company event is important, they’ll likely give you authority to just book over everything.
4. Determine what games, themes or activities you’ll have
You may not need to figure out all the details before you send your invitation, but it can be important to communicate any logistics for the virtual holiday party in advance to your guests. For example, if you’ll be playing a virtual holiday game, they may need to sign up for a service before hand, or pick out a gift. If you’ll be sending them activity or party packs to their home, you may need to collect addresses. Don’t wait until the last minute to decide how you’ll be celebrating with your team!
Check out our lists below for great ideas!
5. Send your Invitations
For your company, chances are you have a standard way to send calendar invites, and a standard video conferencing platform (e.g. Zoom, Google Meet or Teams). It’s easy to setup the video link, and blast out the invite to all your guests. Using a calendar invite will help ensure you get a proper headcount as well.
But - if you really want to make an impact and get your guests excited for the holiday party, consider designing your own invitation! Check out these ready-made holiday themed e-invitations on Paperless Post, Punchbowl or Evite. They all have free (as well as premium) options.
6. Host it!
It’s the day of the event: all that’s left is to launch the video call and have a fun time! To make it more memorable (because you’ll be able to look back on the evidence): don’t forget to snap a few photos! Screenshots of the Zoom call during activities, or at the end with everyone smiling, can be a great way to remember the event, and share it with other teams.
6 Tips to make your virtual holiday party FUN
Ultimately, you don’t want your virtual holiday party to just be another ‘virtual happy hour.’ Sure, those can be fun, but after years of remote & hybrid work, just jumping on a Zoom call can feel super stale. Here are 6 tips to make your remote holiday party fun and memorable.
1. Festive Backgrounds
If you were throwing a holiday party at your house, you’d decorate a little bit - right? Well setting fun and festive virtual backgrounds is the Zoom party equivalent! You can let people choose their own, or have a company one that everyone can use. It’ll make for some great conversation, and a nice photo backdrop for when you photograph/screenshot your holiday crew. For virtual holiday party zoom background ideas, check out our 2 articles: 11 Zoom Backgrounds for your Virtual White Elephant and More Zoom backgrounds for your Office Holiday Party
2. Music
Once again: party basics. It always helps to have some tunes going in the background, to take up any silence and set the fun and festive vibe you want! Here’s how to play holiday music through Zoom.
3. Drinks
Drinks are another great way to set the holiday (and party!) vibe for your group. If you want to be fancy, you could send everyone a pack to make their own cocktail or mocktail. But this could even be as simple as telling everyone: come with your favorite drink in hand! For some this may be a glass of red wine, whiskey on the rocks, or a cup of warm hot cocoa, and that’s great! Whatever get’s them jolly.
4. Engaging Holiday Activities
One thing that will really separate your holiday party from just another ‘zoom happy hour’ is an activity! Whether it’s trivia, wreath decorating, drink tasting or a holiday gift swap, you want something that will get people involved, talking and laughing. Simply scroll down for 6 themes and 15 great game and activity ideas you can use!
5. Holiday Gifts or Party Packs
If you manage a remote team, then there can be something really exciting about getting some physical to share together. So even if you’re not in the same space, if you’re all opening up a box of similar items to have a shared experience, that can be really memorable and powerful. The basic idea is for you (or a helping elf) to order (or put together) & ship a box of treats or activities to your guests. This could be materials to facilitate an activity you’re going to run, such as ginger bread house making & decorating. Or it could just be a fun gift basket of food, chocolate, sweets, or other holiday knick knacks.
6. Capture the moment
Nothing is worse than having a wonderful time with family, friends or colleagues and realizing you have nothing to remember it by! Taking a couple photos (i.e. screenshots) during the event can be a great way to memorialize the event, share it with those who attended, and even share it with those in your company that may have missed it - it’ll get them excited for next time!
The best times to snap photos are during the activity, so you can capture the action and the reactions and laughter, or at the end with everyone sporting their fun Zoom background, festive outfit, and wearing a big smile. If you have a large group, just make sure to flip through the multiple pages of Zoom, Teams or Google Meets screens so you can get everyone!
6 Themes for your virtual holiday party
A great way to set your party apart - from any others that are being thrown this year, or from any in your guests memory - is to set a party theme! Here are 6 ideas that will bring the holiday traditions alive online. The best part: most of these are completely free.
1. Ugly Sweater Party
An ugly sweater party is a classic holiday party theme where participants wear intentionally tacky, gaudy, or humorous holiday sweaters. The goal of an ugly sweater party is to embrace the kitschy and over-the-top nature of holiday-themed sweaters, often featuring bold colors, excessive decorations, and quirky designs. This not only provides loads of laughs, but creates a fun and lighthearted atmosphere.
Sweaters can be purchased from thrift stores, vintage shops, or specialty stores that specifically cater to ugly holiday sweaters. Some participants can even go the extra mile and embellish their sweaters with additional decorations like tinsel or bows.
If you want, you can even award prizes for things like "ugliest sweater" and "most original design."
2. Black Tie Party
Going in the opposite direction of the ugly sweater theme, encourage all of your guests to dress to the nines at your “Black Tie” holiday party! For many of us on remote teams, the most dressed up we get is a clean pair of jeans when going to the grocery store. A holiday party could be the perfect excuse to dust off that fancy and festive wear.
3. Pet Party Theme
Give all of your guests a +1 for their pet! One of the best parts of hybrid and remote work is the cute pup or cat lounging in the background of your coworkers’ video feed. So why not bring them to the party? Having a “meet n greet” with your friends or co-workers pets is a hilarious and fun activity. If you really want to tie into the holiday theme, encourage them to dress their pets in their holiday best!
4. Winter Wonderland
Whether you live in a cold climate or not, the “White Christmas”-type theme can be a fun way to get into the holiday spirit. The best way to do this would be to send out a ‘holiday party gift box’ to everyone, including things like hot cocoa mix and marshmallows, a wintry-smelling candle, and a small kit to decorate their own snowman for their desk.
5. Holiday Singalong
Don’t worry - you don’t actually have to sing if you don’t want to. But a fun way to get everyone involved in the office holiday party is to create a shared Spotify playlist and have everyone submit their favorite holiday & Christmas songs to the list! You could get everything from jazzy instrumental renditions, to Dean Martin mainstays, to modern pop classics like “All I want for Christmas is You.” Having the music playing in the background through your Zoom call is easy, and it’s fun conversation starter as the playlist plays, your coworkers, friends or family can callout which ones they love or contributed.
6. Season of Giving
If you want to get into the ‘giving’ side of the holiday season, you can encourage all your guests to contribute a donation to a cause they care about. Not only will your party contribute to some good in the world, you can also use that as a conversation piece during the holiday party, letting people mention the causes that are close to them. It’s a great way to get to know your friends or coworkers better at your next remote holiday party.
15 Activities & Games for your virtual holiday party
1. Virtual White Elephant
White Elephant is one of the most interactive and fun holiday games around! You may also know it as “Yankee Swap” or “Dirty Santa”. How it works everyone brings one gift, often something that is quirky or silly (though you can set whatever theme you like)! Everyone draws a number, and you begin opening & stealing gifts in the order of the numbers you drew. Between the surprise of what every new gift is, and the dynamics of everyone trying to get the gift they want most, it’s a gift-swap game that keeps everyone engaged and laughing.
Playing White Elephant Virtually is easy with our platform - check it out here!
2. Virtual Secret Santa
Secret Santa is another popular holiday gift-swap activity, though it’s less of a game. The way Secret Santa works is that everyone draws a name of another team member, and they’ll become the “Secret” gift giver for that person. During the event, each person opens their gift, and the Santa will reveal themselves!
To do this virtually, it’s best to draw the names ahead of time, and have everyone ship their gifts so that people can open them during the remote holiday party. To make drawing names easier, you can checkout free tools from Elfster or DrawNames.
Trying to decide between White Elephant and Secret Santa? For office holiday parties, Secret Santa can be a bit more pressure, because you have to choose the “right” gift for one person, as opposed to just picking a generic “fun” gift for the group like with White Elephant. For more pros and cons of each, check out our article: White Elephant vs. Secret Santa: Which is the Premier Holiday Gift Swap Game?
3. Holiday Trivia Challenge
Trivia is always a lot of fun, and creating a holiday-themed trivia game isn’t too hard, with plenty of free trivia questions and trivia platforms online. Just prepare some questions about holiday traditions, movies, songs, and historical facts. Divide participants into teams, or have them play as individuals. Once the competition begins, you can award points and prizes for the highest scoring team!
4. Virtual Holiday Mixology Class
You can hire a professional mixologist to host a Zoom mixology class. There are plenty of providers out there that will take care of everything for you, including shipping all the ingredients to your guests, and leading an educational and fun tasting & mixing experience. If you don’t have the budget for a professional, plan you’re own! Send out a list of ingredients people will need for whichever popular holiday cocktail you’ve chosen, and everyone can follow along and enjoy their homemade drinks together during the party. Just keep in mind: keep the ingredient list simple, and make sure to have a holiday mocktail version available as well for those who don’t drink.
5. Virtual Wine or Beer Tasting
This is similar to the prior option, but is a bit simpler. You can hire a virtual wine or beer aficionado to talk you through a tasting of some select drinks. It’s a fun way to not only taste new wine or beer, but to learn about the tasting process, i.e. what to look for in a red wine, or what effect different hop processes have on beer. If you hire a virtual experience, they’ll likely take care of the distribution of all the necessary drinks. If you’re going to do it yourself, beer is probably a more realistic option: many places allow you to ‘make your own 6-pack’ and choose different beers, resulting in a relatively cheap experience. Buying 3+ bottles of wine on the other hand can get pretty pricey.
6. Virtual Gingerbread House Decorating
Send gingerbread house kits to your team members' homes prior to the party. You can set aside time during the event for everyone to decorate their gingerbread houses together virtually. You’ll definitely share some laughs and creative ideas as you build your sweet and edible masterpieces.
7. DIY Ornament Making
Send out a package with crafting supplies to your group so they can create their own holiday ornaments. In addition to the supplies, you may want to provide instructions or idea prompts. During the call, everyone can share their creations. It's a great way for guests to express their individual creativity and celebrate the holiday spirit. The only thing to keep in mind for an office virtual holiday party is that this is a bit Christmas-specific, so if you want something more holiday-neutral go with one of the other options.
8. Holiday Cooking or Baking Class
Do you have an amateur baker amongst your colleagues? If so, see if they want to lead a virtual holiday baking class. They can choose a recipe they love, send out the ingredients list in advance, and everyone can follow along as the “Chef” guides everyone through the steps. It not only gets people participating in the event, it also leaves everyone with a delicious result at the end!
9. DIY Wreath-Making Workshop
You can send wreath-making kits to your team members' homes and provide a virtual workshop where everyone can follow along to create their own holiday wreaths. Guests can get creative ideas from each other and share tips for designing a beautiful wreath. Display the finished wreaths during the party for everyone to admire - and for you to snap a photo of!
10. Virtual Holiday Charades
Charades is a classic party game, and there’s no reason you can’t play it virtually! Come up with a list of holiday-themed words, phrases, movies, or songs. Divide participants into teams and take turns acting out clues while others try to guess. It's a game that guarantees laughter and friendly competition. For smaller groups, instead of teams you can just have one person go at a time and let everyone guess.
11. Virtual Holiday Bingo
Create customized holiday-themed bingo cards - there are plenty of online templates or apps. Share the cards with participants and use a random number or phrase generator. Offer fun prizes for the first person to complete a line, pattern of your choice, or a full blackout on their card. Another way to play is to have each box on the bingo card represent a phrase that someone may say during the meeting. Maybe it’s a holiday phrase, maybe it’s corporate buzzwords. As people complete a line, they can claim their prize.
12. Holiday Paint ‘n’ Sip
Paint and Sips are a ton of fun. If you’re not familiar, they consist of one person leading a tutorial on how to paint a specific scene. Typically, attendees will also be sipping on whatever beverage they’d like to enjoy (usually a little vino). Do this remotely by sending everyone some basic paintings supplies (canvas, acrylic or water color paint, and a couple brushes). If you have any artist among you, you can have them lead the session. Or, let everyone have fun creating their own holiday scenes. Displaying their creations at the end will make for fun memories and camaraderie amongst your group.
13. Name that Holiday Tune
Have a little friendly competition with your group, by playing a “Name that Tune” trivia game, specifically with holiday songs. The way to organize this is get your playlist of 15 or 20 songs. For each song, play only a very brief clip (e.g. a couple seconds). Everyone will write down what song they think it is. At the end, go through each one announcing the right answer, awarding points for each correct answer. Choose a prize for the winner.
14. Name that Holiday Movie
The format of this is the same as the holiday tune: get a list of 15 or 20 Christmas / Holiday movies, and get a famous (or not so famous) quote from each one. As you read them, guests will guess which movie each line is from. At the end, reveal the answers and see who is the holiday movie champion!
15. Share Holiday Traditions
This is a great conversation starter that will not only be fun, but also allow you and your coworkers (or friends and family) to get to know each other better. Simply ask the group some prompts about their holiday traditions, whether ones they had as a kid, or ones they’ve started as adults. You may hear some touching stories, as well as some really funny ones! This activity works will in conjunction with other activities, since it may not take the full time of your virtual holiday party.
Bonus Tip: Free virtual holiday party ideas
All of the following activities (described in detail above) are free virtual holiday party ideas - meaning neither you as the organizer or the participants need to spend a dime - a great way to have an inexpensive seasonal celebration with your team, especially if you don’t have any budget for throwing your virtual holiday party at work: #3 Holiday Trivia (if you run it yourself), #10 Virtual Holiday Charades, #11 Virtual Holiday Bingo, #13 Name that Holiday Tune, #14 Name that Holiday Movie, #15 Share Holiday Traditions. That being said, if you’re organizing an event at work then footing the bill for something a little more memorable may be the right call, if you can.
Partying At Work: Virtual Office Holiday Party Tips
Throwing a party for co-workers at the office is a different animal than throwing an event for your family or close friends. Here are 5 things to keep in mind for your office holiday party:
1. Make it easy to participate in
We know how busy people can get, especially around the holidays when they’re preparing to take time off. While you probably feel you shouldn’t need to force anyones hand to join a free and fun event, making it as easy as possible to join in the fun can help ensure a high participation rate. This could be as simple as making the directions for any activities really clear, or doing as much as you can as the organizer to allow them to just show up and have a fun time. Use multiple communication methods as well: email, calendar invites, Slack, Teams - meet people where they are and make sure they know about the event!
2. Schedule your event at an appropriate time
You can see above for when to throw your virtual holiday party, but the main points for an office party is: do it during work hours (e.g. late in the day), and do it on a day when they’re likely to be available and have have a fun time, e.g. Thursday or Friday.
3. Foot the bill (if you can)
Running a virtual event is already so much cheaper than an in-person event (think: Venue and drink tab), so allocating some budget to make it a truly fun and memorable holiday party is important. At White Elephant Online, we’ve had plenty of customers who actually foot the bill for the whole event, meaning they pay for all of the gifts that their employees win in the office gift-swap. Even if you can’t afford that, paying to have an interactive event can go a long way.
4. Keep it inclusive
Everyone loved a good holiday party, but not everyone celebrates Christmas. Just be conscious of the different beliefs and backgrounds of your team and run an event everyone can enjoy! Many of the activities we suggest above are fun for everyone and not Christmas-specific, even including gift swap games like White Elephant.
5. Create an annual tradition
Sometimes it can take a year or two for a virtual holiday party to really catch on, so don’t be afraid to have some elements of it that you do again and again each year, so people know what to expect and have something to look forward to! That’s one of the reasons we founded White Elephant Online: we had a tradition of playing White Elephant at our office, and couldn’t imagine not doing that during COVID. Launching White Elephant Online allowed us, and so many others, to keep our traditions alive. Now with so many teams adopting remote & hybrid long-term, it’s up to you to create those fun and memorable traditions for your company
Playing White Elephant for your Virtual Holiday Party - FAQ
If you’re looking to plan the most fun event with the least amount of effort, you may be interested in playing the popular gift-swap game White Elephant for your virtual holiday party. Below are some common questions, and you can Learn more here!
Can I play White Elephant Virtually?
Yes - at White Elephant Online we’ve developed a platform to play White Elephant, Yankee Swap and Dirty Santa completely virtually. It not only lets you play, it really captures the fun and excitement of the in-person game.
How does White Elephant Online work?
Once you signup for free, you can create or purchase a game and invite your guests. Everyone will “submit a gift” virtually to the “Game Table” ahead of the game. On the day of the event, one person will share their screen (e.g. on Zoom or other video platform), show the Game Screen, and play! White Elephant Online takes you step by step from assigning numbers, to enforcing all the rules as you open & steal gifts. Once the game is done, everyone can ship their gifts to the winner (or a central admin can handle distribution if you want to maintain employee privacy).
How much does White Elephant Online Cost?
Games start at just $49 for companies, and are free for small personal groups of family & friends. It’s an inexpensive way to have a blast with your group, and has been used by thousands of companies and families across the country.
Can I try it out for free?
Yes - Signup for free, and test out the platform for yourself!
Conclusions
In 2023, there are so many ways you can bring your remote team, friends group, and far-flung family members together this holiday season. We hope you found some great inspiration and ideas for your next virtual holiday party, and have a wonderful event.