With 31 virtual holiday party ideas, you're sure to find a unique one to host. You should choose a party theme you know all your guests will enjoy and then have fun!
Virtual Holiday Party Ideas
You can use virtual holiday party ideas for your holiday party online. Companies can also use these ideas and offer a wider range of prizes than most individuals.
1. Secret Santa
You can use an online service like Elfster to set up your party's Secret Santa. Set a monetary limit and encourage participants to take advantage of the website's wish list feature. You can send your gift to arrive before the party. End your virtual holiday party games with the big reveal. Let each person take turns opening their Secret Santa gift and show to everyone.
2. Showoff Christmas Trees
In advance, notify each part guest that you wish to showoff their Christmas trees during the party. Each person will take their turn in revealing their decorated Christmas tree. This is an excellent icebreaker.
3. Sing Christmas Carols and Songs
You can liven up your Virtual Christmas party by having everyone join in singing Christmas carols. You can provide the music and share the lyrics for each song. For added fun, you can choose a Christmas carol like "Silent Night" for half the group to sing and "Beneath the Silent Stars" for the other half to sing together in unison.
This video demonstrates how you can have a Christmas carol round.
4. Watching Movies Together on Zoom
According to Nerds Chalk, you can use Zoom to watch movies together by sharing your screen when on Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime videos, and others. Choose a movie that you can watch together for a virtual holiday party. Let everyone share what they are munching on, such as Christmas cookies, popcorn, candy canes, and other treats.
5. One Christmas Family Tradition
A fun way to get to know each other is to share one family tradition each guest practices. Pre-plan by sending each guest a few suggestions about the type of things they may wish to share to help get them started thinking about what they may want to say. This type of preparation will keep your party going and your guests engaged.
6. Christmas Costume Contest
You can hold a Christmas costume contest. Create different categories, such as most festive, most creative and so on. Give winners a virtual graphic, such as a virtual hug meme and a virtual ribbon prize jpg they can print out and pin to their costume for the remainder of the party.
7. Wreath Making Virtual Holiday Party
Making a holiday wreath can be Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, or other holiday theme. Choose a wreath you think most people will like. Send a photo of the wreath you select and a list of necessary supplies. Provide step-by-step instructions during your virtual party. Have each guest take a selfie of their creation and post on their social media.
8. Film Dubbing Game
This game is similar to the film dubbing played on Whose Line Is It Anyway. The show takes B or lower rated movies and dub in lines instead of the actual ones used. Explain the nature of improv (improvisation) prior to your party and how the game will work.
- In this game, you and your guests will watch a movie with sound muted.
- Let your guests dub in the lines for the characters.
- Depending on the number of guests you have and the number of characters in the movie, you can have guests take turns portraying the characters. You need to assign guests to specific characters at the beginning and let them know how long they will have, such as five to ten minutes, and then the next set of guests will take over. Let each set of guests know what order they will fall, naming them group one, group two and so on.
9. Virtual Karaoke
You can use a website like Watch2Gether to watch various karaoke videos together. Select the videos you wish to use prior to your party. You'll need to use Zoom to share your browser with your guests for greater interaction. You can choose karaoke such as the ones available on YouTube and other venues.
10. Paint and Sip
You can plan a paint and sip virtual holiday party. Choose the painting you want to use, send a list of supplies needed, and provide instructions. If you aren't confident as the painting instructor, share a video in your Zoom hosted party so everyone can follow along. Be sure to pause the video to allow guests to comment, share their progress, or ask questions. You may prefer to let the experts do it by choosing from various paint and sip companies that have gone virtual with their classes.
11. Music Jam Session Virtual Party
If your guests are musicians, or some are musicians, plan a blowout jam session. Those who don't play instruments can still enjoy the party and might decide to sing along.
12. Progressive Holiday Story Creation
This is a creative game that becomes a story. This is a Hodge-Podge story that is often nonsensical because it has no real plot line. This is what makes it a fun game to play. Be sure to use the record feature since this game usually ends up being very funny. After your party, you can type up the story and send it to each guest for a keepsake.
- Assign each person a number.
- State the story theme, such as Santa's workshop the day before Christmas Eve.
- Ask each person to write two sentences on a piece of paper based on that theme.
- You'll start the story with two sentences you prepared earlier.
- Call out number one and let that person read their two lines, followed by number two, and so on.
- You will provide the last two sentences to end the story.
13. Ornament Making Virtual Party
An ornament making virtual party can be lots of fun even for guest who aren't crafters. Select an ornament you can make as a group. You'll want to time the process prior to your party to ensure you have enough time to create it. Send each guest a list of supplies needed. Wait until your party to provide the instructions. Have guests share their progress as you work.
14. Take Guests on a Virtual Tour
You can plan a virtual tour for your guests. Before your party, map out the various places you wish to tour. You can use a combination of videos, photos, and links. Choose a theme, such as best gingerbread houses (Christmas), scariest haunted houses (Halloween), best Thanksgiving meals, and so on. You may prefer to visit actual places or present various videos of Christmas light displays.
15. Couples Dance Virtual Holiday Party Ideas
You can host a virtual dance for your holiday party. Plan your playlist by pacing fast dances followed by slow dances, rotating the way a DJ does. You can find YouTube DJ playlists or you can create your own playlist. This type of party should only be for couples, so no one's feelings are hurt from feeling left out.
16. Holiday Photos That Tell a Story
Before your holiday party, ask guests to select one or more photos of a past holiday that tell a story. Stress that these should be entertaining stories either funny or heart-warming, not anything that is tragic, sad, or negative. Each guest should be prepared to share the story behind the photo and how it is meaningful to them.
17. Dress Your Pet for a Virtual Party
If you have a group of friends who have pets, ask them to dress their pet, either in a festive costume or headgear. They should make a video of their pet to share during the virtual party, since pets don't always cooperate on cue. Ask each guest to share a little about their beloved pet while showing their videos.
Virtual Holiday Party Food Ideas
You may be a foodie and your friends ardent foodies, too. Capitalizing on this common interest can lead you to a holiday food celebration party.
18. Virtual Cocktail Hour
Prior to your party, send out three to four mixed cocktail drink recipes to your guests, along with an ingredients list. Have your guests mix one cocktail at the same time and play games in between each one.
19. Cookie Decorating Virtual Holiday Party
This virtual any holiday party requires attendees to either bake cookies or purchase plain ones to decorate. You can provide sugar cookie and decorating icing recipes along with a convenient ingredient lists a couple of weeks prior to your cookie decorating virtual party. Keep the conversation going while everyone decorates their cookies. You can tell jokes, share stories, and interact the same way you would with an in-person party.
20. Hot Chocolate Virtual Tasting Party
A fun way to spend time with friends in a virtual holiday party is a tasting party. A hot chocolate tasting party makes it fun to try three to four different hot chocolates. Select different hot chocolate flavors, such as peppermint, white chocolate, hazelnut, caramel, French vanilla, raspberry, or spicy hot. You can either send out recipes, or make packaged hot chocolate suggestions.
21. Wine Tasting Virtual Tasting Party
You can select three to four wines for your virtual tasting party. In the same spirit of a BYO wine party, guests can make purchases of wines based on the list you send them prior to the party. You can make suggestions for cheeses and other foods to pair with the wines.
22. Virtual Holiday Dinner Party
If you and your friends are used to getting together to celebrate the holiday with a dinner party, but the coronavirus has put the skids on that activity, go virtual. You can plan your virtual dinner party theme. You and your guests can get together and plan a menu everyone can agree on. Everyone can decide on the best recipes and share them to ensure everyone prepares the same dishes. The last part of your dinner party is setting the table. You can share via your webcams the table setting, including the centerpieces and place settings. You can select the appropriate holiday music for dinner and enjoy the company of your friends. Bon appétit!
Virtual Holiday Party Games
You may want to play games at your virtual holiday party. You can choose from time-tested games that are sure to entertain your guests.
23. Name That Tune
You can create a playlist of about songs to use during the game. You can divide the songs into groups of five or six.
- Play the first few seconds of the song, usually about three to four notes and the first person to guess the tune wins.
- You will need to keep score and give each correct answer one point.
- At the end of each round, you will tally the score and announce the winner.
- When the game is over the person with the most points is the champion
24. Play Virtual Bingo
There are several ways you can play virtual bingo. You can use one of the popular online Bingo game/card maker like Bingo Baker or Bingo Maker. You will need to pre-plan your prizes. The most prizes are gift cards. You can purchase these directly from the merchant or from a website like GiftCards. Many of the gift cards start at $10.
Alternative to Paying for Gift Cards
If you can't afford to pay for a lot of gift cards, but your friends enjoy playing Bingo, you can make it a buy-in and ask each attendee to donate $10 to your PayPal account so you can immediately send out eGift cards to the winners. Depending on how many donating attendees you have, you can then make the game go farther by requiring a 2-3 game win for prizes.
Get Virtual Gift Donations
You may decide to forego monetary prizes and collect virtual gifts from friends, such as a 10-30 minute virtual session from a Reiki master, a psychic reading, tax advice, photo edit, decorating advice, or other talents your friends and family are willing to donate. You may need to be creative in finding various virtual prizes for your game.
25. Play Virtual Charades
You can create a list of ideas for charades. Divide into teams and take turns trying to guess the message, movie title, book title, and so on.
26. Virtual Holiday Party Games of Asking Questions
Would You Rather game is a great way to have fun in a virtual group. You might prefer to play This or That question game. You can modify various games to fit your group. You want to choose appropriate questions and steer clear of anything that could potentially be embarrassing to any of your guests. You should allow each guest wishing to play to take their turn answering each question asked.
27. Virtual Scavenger Hunt
You can plan a scavenger hunt for your virtual party. You can make a list of the most likely items people will have during the holiday, making sure to add a few that may be more difficult to procure. You should set a timer for each round. It's best to pair up or for larger groups, create teams so they can divide the list of items to hunt for in their homes.
28. Virtual Holiday Themed Game of Trivia
You can play a game of trivia based on your holiday theme. You'll need to select your questions/answers in advance. You can find all types of holiday trivia questions online. Simply divide your guests into teams and let the fun begin.
29. Virtual Holiday Party Game of Never Have I Ever
You can play a long-time favorite game, Never Have I Ever. You can make it more interesting when you choose a holiday theme for your choices or some other theme suitable for your guests.
30. Last Letter Game for Virtual Holiday Party
The Last Letter Game is a lot of fun for a virtual holiday party. You will want to have access to lots of words to help stumped players, such as Your Dictionary, where you can type in the letter to pull up a list of words. Your guests can play individually, or you may want to split them into teams. Set a timer for each word so the game keeps moving. If a team can't think of a word, the other team(s) get a chance. If no one can think of a word, you will give one and the game continues with your word. Make it a rule that players can't use the internet for hints.
31. Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral Game
The game, Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral is also known as Is It Bigger than a Breadbox, since many people use this as their first questions. In this virtual version, whoever's turn it is will send a private message to the host to let you know what that something is. This way the something can't be changed during the game.
- The person will state they are thinking of either an animal, vegetable, or mineral.
- Each guest will get one guess as the game progresses.
- The person will answer either yes, no, or sometimes.
- The type of questions are determined by whether it is animal, vegetable, or mineral.
- The first person to guess correctly is the winner and takes their turn.
Deciding on Unique and Fun Virtual Holiday Party Ideas
You can choose from 31 unique virtual holiday party ideas for your perfect virtual party this holiday season. Spread the holiday good cheer by inviting your friends to a virtual holiday party this year!
