Christmas is a great opportunity to throw a party. After all, it's a season for celebrating friends and family. If you plan out your party ahead of time, you can be sure that your guests will enjoy themselves from the minute they arrive until the minute they depart.
Giving your Christmas party a theme can help excite and engage your guests. There are many great options for your theme. You should get creative when deciding on a theme, but here are a few ideas to get you started.
- The Medieval Age: With a theme based on the medieval times, you can ask your guests to come dressed as kings, queens, knights, etc. You can decorate your house accordingly, and use minstrel music to entertain your guests. Of course, no medieval party would be complete without a feast.
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- Christmas Costumes: Invite your guests to dress up like a character from Christmas. There are countless options to choose from: shepherds, angels, Santa Claus, Rudolph, a snowman, or many others. You could even have your guests dress like characters from Christmas movies, like Will Ferrell in "Elf."
- The Color White: You can celebrate your Christmas party with the color white being the theme. Decorate your home all in white and suggest that your guests dress in white. This idea would create a beautiful dinner party. You could also do a Christmas color theme instead of just white.
- Time Period Theme: Choose any time period you like for Christmas party theme. For example, you could have a 1980s Christmas party.
Guest List
Before you decide who to invite to your Christmas party, you should figure out how big of a party you want to have. You may enjoy a smaller dinner party, or perhaps you adhere to the adage "the more the merrier." Just make sure you have enough room and supplies for the amount of people you invite.
You have a few invitation options as well. First, you could send out online invites through e-mail or from a site like www.evite.com. Second, you could buy or make your own invitations to send out through the mail. Last, you can ask people face to face or over the phone. Make sure your invitation includes all the details your guests will need to know like: time, place, theme, if they need to wear a costume, if they need to bring food or other supplies, and a way to RSVP.
Christmas Party Games
Games can help keep your guests entertained. You can share laughs and debates as you swap gifts or play Christmas charades. You and your guests can create some lasting Christmas memories by playing games together. You should come up with a variety of game ideas. If one turns out to be a dud, you can move on to another. To make things more interesting, you can give out prizes to the winners of each game. Here are a few game ideas:
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- Gift Exchange: If you want to do a gift exchange, you'll have to notify your guests ahead of time to bring a gift. Also, give them a spending range (usually $10 - $20 is a good range). There are many different ways to do a gift exchange, but here's one idea: Write numbers on slips of paper, one for each person playing, and then put them in a hat. Everyone draws a number, and that's the order in which you play. The first person up chooses a gift and then unwraps it. Each person that follows can either steal a gift opened before or choose to open a new one. Each gift can only be stolen three times. The process continues until all the gifts are opened and everyone has one.
- Christmas Charades: A simple variation of the popular party game, in which you take turns acting out characters, events, or objects from Christmas, without speaking, and have the others guess who or what it is you're acting out. Whoever guesses correctly gets a point and is next up to act. The person with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.
- Christmas Song Drawing: Get a whiteboard or a large pad. Write down the names of Christmas songs on slips of paper and put them in a hat or bowl. Take turns selecting a song and drawing it on the board. You can't use letters or any other symbol found on a keyboard. Whoever guesses the song title correctly gets a point. The person with the most points, once all the songs have been used, is the winner.
Decorating and Setup
Decorate according to your theme. The classic Christmas decorations include holly, mistletoe, wreaths, garlands, a Christmas tree, Christmas lights, nutcrackers, and snow. You can't go wrong with these, but you can feel free to be creative and even break with tradition, if you want.
If you're having a dinner party, you might want to delegate some of the cooking duties to your guests. This will make it so no one person has to do all the cooking. Even if you're not having a full dinner, you could have some of your guests bring hors d'oeuvres.
As you can see, there are plenty of things to do during your Christmas party. From themes to games, there's a lot of fun to be had. If you get creative and plan ahead, your party is sure to be a success.