Your colleagues and employees may no longer gather in-office to celebrate the lavish parties, but that’s not enough reason not to host a Christmas team building. Even if remote, the team has worked hard all year and deserves a chance to connect, celebrate, and unwind in the holiday season. Besides, it’s a perfect opportunity to give yearly awards and publicly recognize your top-performing employees.

The best part is, you and your team are already conversant with most virtual conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, so it shouldn’t take much to host a lively holiday party to keep your team entertained until January.

To do this, you need a carefully thought-out, engaging, and fun event that your team will not forget. To that end, here are 20 Christmas party themes for games and ideas to make your team merry this holiday season.

This guide contains:

• Virtual Christmas team buildings
• Online holiday party ideas
• Virtual Christmas games ideas
• Holiday team building virtual party ideas
• Zoom Christmas party ideas

List of 20 Virtual Christmas Team Buildings

Virtual Christmas Party Ideas

Let’s kick things off with some favourite Christmas party ideas.

Virtual Secret Santa Party

Virtual Secret Santa is an online Christmas-themed gift exchange activity. Each team member is assigned a person to give to. Mostly, picking names is done randomly, through a name picker platform, or even better, using a gift exchange generator. Once you have a gift recipient, the participant then decides what to give the recipient.

It’s the role of the participant to analyze the perfect gift for their r

ecipient.
For instance, you might send that person a book, household item, and wait to open the gifts together at the holiday team building party. The purpose of this Christmas idea is to celebrate the holidays while building comradery.

Christmas Cookie Decoration Party

Gingerbread cookie decoration parties work well for virtual workplaces because the team members don’t need to know how to bake to participate. Send the DIY decorating kits, which include pre-baked sugar, cookies, sprinkles, and frosting, to all attendees before the party. Come the day of the party, everyone will decorate with the guidance of an experienced cookie decorator or independently. The team members are then to share a picture of their final results, which you can vote in a poll to announce the winner.

Learn how to decorate Christmas Cookies.

Holiday Playlist

You’re hardly going to be at a party that has no music. That’s because music makes people feel the moment. To bring this to your virtual Christmas-themed party, you want everyone to take part in creating the soundtrack. The holiday playlist allows your virtual team members to select the holiday music of their choice.

This is how you execute this office party idea:

• Create a Christmas playlist on a music streaming platform like Spotify.
• Invite all your remote team members to add their favorite holiday songs and Christmas carols to the list.
• Play the playlist during your virtual meeting.
• The team guesses which colleague added which song. To make it more personal and engaging, invite them to talk about why they choose that song.
• Like at all parties, Holiday Playlist will get people in the Christmas mood.

Sing Christmas Carols and Songs

It’s one thing to have a holiday playlist, but to have each team member sing their favorite Christmas Carols takes it to another level. But since you’re likely to hear the same songs similar to ones on every radio and TV station, spice it up by adding a bit of originality to the songs.

Just before the Christmas Carols party begins, have your team make their own versions of their favorite song. It would be best to divide the team into small groups to work on an assigned song such as “Silent Night”, “The First Noel”, or “O Holy Night” to avoid repetition.

Art and Craft Christmas Virtual Party

Get crafty for the festive virtual team building activity with an art project. Virtual arts parties can range from ornament decorating, ugly sweater knitting, painting, and more. Beyond the fun and engagement, the team will walk away with a new skill.

Learn more about Virtual Arts and Crafts activities.

Name That Christmas Tune

If you want your colleagues to have some fun and not necessarily be involved in creating the playlist, the Name Your Christmas Tune is a sure candidate. Creating this game is simple. Just make your Spotify playlist or find a Christmas tune playlist on YouTube, and you’re good to go. Play the tune on your virtual meeting and have your team name the tunes.

Christmas Costume Dress-up

From festive Santa suits to nativity costumes, you’ll be amazed by the fancy Christmas costume ideas by your team. This idea aims at bringing the virtual team together for a good laugh before attending a major virtual team building event or other virtual Christmas party ideas such as cookie decorating.

Virtual Photo Booth

A Virtual Photo Booth has the potential to transform your Christmas event by engaging team members into the fun of taking photos. It can turn your passive members into excited participants. Apart from bringing the colleagues together, a virtual photo booth creates excitement and fear of missing out when their colleagues share photos online.

To create a team photo from different locations, have all team members take a photo of themselves, and use a Virtual Photo Booth to combine all into one. Add a custom background and company logo to make it unique.

Cocktail Making

Cocktail making is one of the perfect ways to engage your team in a Christmas party. Of course, this will apply only if your team loves a craft cocktail. Just find experienced mixology to teach your team how to make holiday-themed cocktails (or check our own).

For a smooth holiday cocktail party, ensure you deliver the supplies to all team members before the event or have them purchase the supplies themselves.

Online Talent Show

Your employees are gifted in so many ways beyond the set of skills you see them use in your workplace. A virtual Christmas event can be the perfect place to show their gifts off. It’s also a perfect way to know each other outside of work and connect on a deeper level. Let the volunteers perform their songs, dances, poetry pieces, magic tricks, and more as you sit and enjoy the entertainment. To make it better, make it a competition with some awards for the winner.

Discover top Christmas Talent Shows perfect for your virtual team.

Holiday Charity Drive

Giving is a great part of Christmas. To encourage this giving spirit in your organization, host a charity event. There are many ways you can make giving a part of your virtual Christmas party. For instance, you can offer all employees a virtual credit card and encourage them to donate the balance to a charity of their choice. Alternatively, play your favorite holiday party games and donate to the winning team’s favorite charity.

Discover Volunteering Experiences and Charity Events initiatives.

Christmas Tree Decorating Party

The most common tradition of the festive season is Christmas tree decoration. This tradition was a favorite to most in-office employees. While it may not be the same as in-office decoration, you can create a spin to spice up the holiday gathering. A great idea to get started is to get a lively host to coordinate Christmas decorations for all participants from the comfort of their homes. Gorgeous ornament kits can be supplied to all employees, and the creative host will instruct the team on how to make or use the ornaments.

Virtual Christmas Party Games

The other vital part of your virtual Christmas team building is virtual Christmas party games.

Virtual Christmas Scavenger Hunt

Few games will liven up the team to a holiday spirit as the Virtual Scavenger Hunt. To make the game more Christmas-like, have your teammates hunt for holiday-related items. Then, have them show and tell a story from the item. Start with items that will have the team knowing each other better. Such items are:

• The favorite gift they’ve ever received.
• The most Christmas item they own.
• Their Christmas movie of all time.
• Just make the prompt at the start of the game and set a time for the team to find the item. Have some fired-up gifts for the one who brings the object first and who shares the most engaging story about the item.

Virtual Christmas Trivia

Online trivia is a classic and fun game for any event, but it’s especially captivating for holiday parties. The easiest way to get started with Virtual Christmas Trivia is to divide your team into small groups and task them with the holiday trivia questions. They can start by choosing a Christmas-themed name for their group. Then, they can proceed to discuss and answer their quiz.

Allow for a few minutes (2 to 10 depending on the number of questions), after which you can collect their answers in private, score them and declare the winner.

Here are some Christmas trivia questions to get you started at this game:

• What’s the real-life person Santa Claus is based on? Answer: The Christian bishop St. Nicholas
• Name the popular Christmas song that was written for Thanksgiving? Answer: Jingle Bells
• Name the first company to use Santa Claus in advertising? Answer: Coca Cola
• In what country did the tradition of putting up Christmas trees begin? Answer: Germany
• What is “Merry Christmas” in Spanish: Feliz Navidad Feel free to add trivia questions from Christmas-related movies, songs, stories, holiday traditions, and more. Apart from testing their holiday knowledge, the holiday Trivia game gets the team into the holiday spirit.

Explore more Virtual Trivia experiences conducted by passionate hosts.

Christmas Holiday Movie Pictionary

You may be familiar with Pictionary, where one player draws a picture from a word, and the team guesses what it is before they complete the drawing. With a holiday twist, this game will spice up your holiday team-building games. Whether that’s drawing Kevin's trap-filled house in “Home Alone”, it’s interesting to see what team members will guess of any film.

Virtual Holiday Bingo

You will love how easy it is to implement a virtual Holiday Bingo game featuring a Christmas theme. As a familiar game to most, Virtual Holiday Bingo will capture the attention of your teammates. Use the chat and breakout rooms to liven up the Bingo game or play the game as a team to achieve the best collaboration.

Christmas Storytime

To start this game, you want to write two sentences of a Christmas story but keep them secret from the team. Then, assign every team member a number and have them write two lines of their own. When they’re done, read your two lines, then have the team assist you in calling the numbers that complete the story. Chances are, this game will lead you to funny and captivating holiday stories.

Christmas Charades

We’re sure your team is most familiar with the most common Christmas character, Santa. But are you aware of the endless list of characters, plots, and scenarios? Virtual Christmas Charades challenges the team to read body language as their colleagues act out the characters, scenarios in the most popular holiday movies, carols, and holiday traditions. To play, share the name of the popular holiday song or movie with the player who will act out as the team guesses the title or character.

Virtual Christmas-themed Murder Mystery

Murder Mystery is one of the most engaging Christmas team-building games. An experienced host will lead the remote team to solve the Christmas murder mystery. The participants will cooperate—as a team or in small groups—to find the culprit using the clues, case files, and logic prompted by the host. This game is highly collaborative, fun, and encourages teamwork.

Read more about Virtual Murder Mystery games.

Virtual Holiday Team Building Games

The best way to start the online corporate holiday party is by engaging the team in holiday-inspired team-building games. Virtual Christmas team-building ease the awkwardness and create a fun and safe environment for the team to connect. They encourage the team to interact and feel comfortable to move to other affairs of the virtual holiday party.

We have numerous Online Team-Building Games and ideas to spice up your virtual corporate Christmas party.

Bottomline

Virtual Christmas team-building games and ideas are perfect activities to reconnect and reward your employees and colleagues. Unfortunately, because this is a new endeavor for most managers, the games aren’t as easy to plan and execute. But with the above points, you can comfortably put together exciting and fun games and activities to spice up your next virtual Christmas party.

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