Are you buzzing with excitement yet? It’s the holiday season!
Holidays are right around the corner and we can’t be more excited. Most of us have already started planning how will we spend our holidays this year.
People working in companies get more thrilled about holidays because they get to take a break from work. These holidays will recharge them for yet another crazy work year ahead.
Although social distancing rules have eased out and people are back to indulging in outdoor activities, the unpredictability still prevails. Some organizations have adopted the hybrid workplace model but are still afraid to throw huge parties at work.
But that doesn’t mean employees can’t have fun. It’s the Zoom world we are living in and almost everything is possible virtually.
So why not have virtual holiday party ideas?
In this article, we bring you an interesting list of virtual holiday party ideas that will be as exciting as a physical one. Don’t forget to take note of some of these ideas and you might just end up implementing them in your workplace.
Meaning of Virtual Holiday Parties
Virtual holiday party ideas are online celebrations conducted on video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams.
To celebrate the holidays virtually, you must come up with some great ideas. These ideas are games, specific activities, and themes for a specific holiday gathering.
These virtual holiday ideas are a way to help connect coworkers with each other who may have lost touch due to remote work.
Virtual holiday Party Ideas
Themed Virtual Holiday Party
Adding a theme to a party elevates the experience even more. If you’re hosting a virtual holiday party, you can add a theme to it to make it more engaging for the invitees. For instance, if it’s a Christmas party, tell everyone to dress up in green or red.
If you want to go more creative, you can also have an 80’s themed party. Moreover, you can also take inspiration from iconic movies like ‘Home Alone’ or ‘The Grinch’.
Another idea is to have a party themed around your employees’ hobbies or interests.
Winter Cocktail party
Winter marks the beginning of many festivities. How about celebrating the beginning of this exciting season with a cocktail party?
You can provide a list of liqueurs, drinks, and mixers and ask your employees to buy them. To make things even more fun, you can even hire a bartender to provide instructions to the participants at the virtual party.
Don’t forget to have some non-alcoholic options thrown in for the teetotalers.
It is a fun and creative way of engaging employees in an activity that not only allows them to learn something new but also gets to enjoy the yummy cocktails and mocktails.
Virtual Holiday Decorating Party
Remember that time when all employees would gather to decorate the office for the holiday season?
Fret not, if you work remotely or haven’t returned to the office completely. You can still decorate your own personal space if not your desk at the office.
Send your employees a few decoration items or ask them to buy some beforehand. Ask them to save space in their homes which they can decorate along with their colleagues virtually.
They can share the before and after pictures to add some more enthusiasm. To add some drama, you can set a prize for the best-decorated space. This will motivate the employees to put in their best.
War of the Wizards
Did somebody say Halloween?
Well yes, wizards and witches are synonymous with Halloween.
Halloween is a celebration of magic and nobody does that better than the wizards and witches.
War of the Wizards is a guided game in which throughout the game, your team members will tell stories, solve puzzles, and complete challenges to earn magic items. Each team must then collaborate on how to use these items to gather resources and cast spells in the war effort.
Make Things Spooky
Halloween is just around the corner and it’s the perfect time to do a horror movie marathon. Additionally, if you’re planning for some holiday virtual games for this Halloween season, try the Murder Mystery Entertainment and get ready for a night of problem-solving, puzzles, and thrills!
Virtual Scavenger Hunt
Who doesn’t love scavenger hunts? Up next on our list of Zoom holiday party ideas is a virtual scavenger hunt. For this, gather your employees, and make them move around their own house with a mission to look for things on your to-hunt list.
The list can be simple or you can go deep by adding categories, for instance looking for something golden that’s edible. You can combine this hunt with a little bit of a murder mystery theme and it can be a great idea to try this Halloween.
Yay to Horror Stories
For virtual holiday activities, horror stories are always top-tier. Nights like these don’t require much effort and just need you and your co-workers to virtually show up. So you can lock your door, dim the lights, draw the curtains and surround yourself with your favorite stuffed toys for this one.
All you need to do is put up a Zoom room and you’re good to go. However, if you’re a bit squeamish, add a comedy movie to your to-do list for the night to shake off the horror.
Virtual Dinner Party
A virtual dinner party is exactly what it sounds like, a dinner that you host virtually. The idea is to decide on a recipe or just to eat and hang out on a virtual platform like Zoom or Google Hangouts.
If someone isn’t in the mood to cook, they can try UberEats and get the food delivered right to their doorstep!
A Reminiscent Slideshow
Holidays are the perfect time to take a stroll down memory lane. Be it your graduation photos, pictures of your babies, your grandparents, the trip you took to Italy, your marriage, or your pets, holidays help you cherish those memories once again.
For this virtual party idea, ask everyone to make an album of all their favorite photos and memories and then share them with the rest of you. This can be a lively zoom holiday party with so much to share and cherish!
Classic Trivia Games
Who says you need to be in the same room for an amazing trivia night during holidays? For your virtual holiday party this year, play an online trivia game to make things interesting.
Sites like TriviaMaker or TriviaCrack are there to add the sizzle to your virtual holiday events. From their vibrant websites to the cute games they offer, there’s so much to love about these trivia games.
A Virtual Movie Night
Holidays are the time to relax and binge-watch on multiple seasons. The fun totally increases if you do that with your friends or your co-workers. Teleparty makes it a breeze to watch a movie with your friends.
To make things even more real, you can leave live comments to express your feelings throughout the watch party. So how about adding this next to your list of virtual office party ideas?
A Virtual Gags Night
What’s better than holidays that are filled with endless laughter? For this virtual holiday party idea, you can gather your friend or your team and have a virtual comedy night.
For that, you can choose between either standup comedies or other comedy acts on The Bash Variety Acts. Nothing beats the excitement of watching a live comedy show with your friends even if it’s on Zoom!
Throw a Zoom Karaoke Party
If your team is a bunch of confident people who would kill to have a night at the karaoke bar, this idea is for them. Although hitting a karaoke bar may be hard, you can have an awesome virtual karaoke night instead.
Go to Watch2gether which is where you’ll assemble your queue of karaoke tracks. You can even go to YouTube which has a plethora of various karaoke tracks. Share the screen, sing along and make the most of this virtual party!
Virtual Escape Room
Looking for ideas to enhance your team building? Move the virtual escape room up on your list of holiday team-building activities. The task is simple where teams solve riddles and complete puzzles in a fixed amount of time, with the goal of escaping the room.
For instance, if you try the International Monster Hunter, the goal will be to track down the world’s most mysterious legendary creatures by solving puzzles and answering trivia questions. This one is an especially great activity for those of you that love mysteries, suspense, and problem-solving. Such fun!
Virtual Team Building Bingo
Remember the excitement of screaming out Bingo!? Well, you can surely live that again. Try the Online Team Building Bingo as your next virtual holiday team building activity. They have a downloadable bingo template that you can readily play with or you can download a blank template to add the clues of your own choice.
All the rules are given just under the template. All you need to do is distribute the board to your remote employees, decide on a timeline and sense the childhood nostalgia once again!
Explore YouTube Together
We all can relate to looking for something specific on YouTube and then find ourselves watching the top 20 celebrity wardrobe malfunctions, right? So how about doing this together with your team at your next virtual holiday party?
And if you’re wondering how to do that online with your employees, then fret not. These are wonderful times that we live in and Sync Video is made for that purpose! They even offer a chat platform where you can discuss all that you watch as you’d do in person.
Dance Virtually!
Did you know that dancing takes away your stress? It’s true that dancing causes your body to release endorphins that are natural painkillers and also improve the ability to sleep, which in turn reduces stress. So host a virtual dance party and to make things interesting you can even decide on a theme.
For instance, if you’d rather go with some 80s vibes, do that and you can explore some of the best disco dances. So pump up the volume and dance the stress away with your remote employees virtually!
Holiday Gift Boxes
Holidays are a time of togetherness and nothing better than expressing gratitude through gifts. For this virtual holiday party idea, you would need a delivery service. Whether it’s Christmas or Thanksgiving, food and gifts are essential. This will require some preparations before the party, but it will be worth it.
You can send your remote employees a box of goodies the week before the virtual party. Some ideas for the holiday gifts are:
- A cute mug
- Scented candles
- Cooking utensils
- Cookies and other snacks
- Jigsaw puzzles and other board games
- Stationery items
- Scarves and other knitwear
- Lip balms and other skincare for the cold weather
Become Writers for a Night!
The idea is to begin writing a short story on Google Docs. All your employees take turns to add a line or two to the existing version. Once everyone is done, one person reads out the whole thing out loud. This idea is sure to come with many waves of laughter and memories!
Take a Class Online
During work, none of us find the time to do things we love. Many of us want to take a few cooking classes or even learn a new language. Holidays give you plenty of time to live your dreams. You can take virtual cooking classes with your employees and do a lot more this holiday season!
All Set to Enjoy this Holiday Season Virtually?
This was our list of the best virtual holiday party ideas for you to choose from. Play some of these games and spread laughs all around. One thing that is sure to come is tons of memories and fun.
Happy holidays!