Jacqueline Arias in CulturePreen

Make your intimate Christmas parties less boring

Ah, Christmas parties. The best time to get to know your officemates and also reconnect with friends you haven’t seen in months.

I don’t know about you guys but planning an intimate Christmas party with your close friends can be fun. Sure, there are stressful elements like choosing a date when everyone’s free and figuring out a venue, but it’s still rewarding to see everyone having fun at your small get-together.

If you’ve been throwing Christmas parties with your friends for a while, you might want to spruce up your upcoming parties. We have some tips that might help you out:

Change of scenery

The usual venues for intimate Christmas parties are someone’s house. The downsides to that are 1) You can’t be too noisy because you might disturb your friend’s family or their neighbors, and 2) It might be difficult to schedule the party because of the house’s availability.

If it worked out for you guys, then great! But you can also consider booking an Airbnb or going out of town for your Christmas party this year. If you’re doing the latter, make sure that the host/s are okay with you having a party on their property. Also, make sure you clean up before you leave!

Experiment with new food recipes

There are some who do potlucks at Christmas parties. But how about instead of buying takeout and raiding the grocery, you and your friends can do a casual cook-off? You can do it at someone’s home or Airbnb you’re booking if there’s a kitchen. Whip out some recipes you found online or bring out your family cookbook.

Play bartender

Similar to the previous point, you can also research on unique Christmas-appropriate cocktails and make them for your guests. For starters, check out this list we made.

Prepare games

No, we don’t mean Trip to Jerusalem or the newspaper dance. Make the party more competitive with board games, card games (we’re interested in trying Happy Ending Game), and even video games. The more it tests your friendship, the better—just be sure you’re still friends after the party.

Make gift-exchanging more exciting

Simply picking out names and giving each other gifts is so old-school. You can make gift-exchanging more competitive by turning it into a White Elephant activity. The rules are simple: You pick a gift from a pile and open it. If your guests like your gift, they can steal it from you, and vice versa. It can get pretty heated, especially if more than one person likes the same gift.

You can also try Hot Gift Potato (passing around a gift until a timer runs out), or have your guests put in trivia about themselves in a hat and you have to guess which one wrote it to get a gift. If you want more ideas, Bustle listed down a bunch.

This is also the perfect time to remind you about your kris kringle presents. Get them before the Christmas rush sets in!

Art by Tricia Guevara

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