Virtual holiday get-togethers provide opportunities to make new kinds of memories in new kinds of ways.
These parties are online celebrations usually held over team party platforms like Teamland or video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Webex, and Google Meet. Virtual holiday party ideas are specific activities, games, and themes for your holiday gathering. These events help you maintain strong and natural connections with friends and coworkers you can’t see due to physical or social distance serving as virtual Christmas parties or “virtual Xmas.”
If you're looking for fun interactive holiday party ideas, we got you covered.
In this list you will find:
- The best virtual holiday party ideas
- How to host a Virtual Holiday Party
- Virtual Christmas party ideas
- Inclusive Virtual Holiday Parties
- Virtual Holiday Party Ideas for Work
- Ideas for remote holiday parties
- Virtual office holiday party ideas
- Free virtual holiday party games
- Virtual holiday party activities
- Questions People Ask about Virtual Holiday Parties
So, let’s get started!
Virtual Holiday Party Ideas
1. Virtual Holiday Party in a box
To make it easier for many, we created a Virtual Holiday Party event type specifically for remote workers. You can use the Teamland platform or have the experience over a video conference platform which includes holiday-themed games like holiday trivia and stocking stuffer scavenger hunts. You can also choose from options for sending gift packages to your guests.
Each event is facilitated and organized by a host so you can rest easy with everything being done for you. The goal is for this to be the best darn virtual holiday party your people ever attended. We’ve hosted events for teams like Amazon, Shopify, Expedia, StackAdapt, Disney, and more.
Learn more about our virtual holiday parties in a box.
2. Winter Chalet
Our Winter Chalet is a fully hosted virtual team building event for the holidays. It includes holiday games, winter legends, and a cup of real cocoa. This event is great for teams looking for something cozy to do during the holidays and is excellent for having fun and building connections. Before the event, we mail each of your participants a kit with hot chocolate, tiny marshmallows, a candy cane, and more. We manage all the logistics and planning.
Learn more about Winter Chalet.
Can't decide what's best for your team? Check out the FREE Holiday Party Team Idea Generator to filter the best activity for your team.
3. Send Beautiful Holiday Gift Boxes
Sometimes getting gifts in the mail is the best surprise. You can reward your employees with a gift of goodies. You can do this before your virtual party or if your team is feeling zoomed out, have an off-screen event with a gift box being sent to them.
See our Holiday Gift Box for more information.
If you’d like to make your own gift box, here are a few options:
- Snacks - candy cane, cookies
- Beverage - hot chocolate or tea mix
- Accessories - headbands, hats, and sunglasses
- Activities - puzzles, crafts, games
- Swag - t-shirt, mugs, scarfs
- Gift Cards for stores or subscription services
4. Virtual Holiday Bingo
Playing Bingo is a fun activity for the holidays because it encourages interaction and competitive cheer. You can send out bingo cards to everyone in the mail to make it more interactive or even use a platform like Teamland where Bingo is hosted in the app. You can play this game any time in Q4, or as one of the games or events at your main virtual holiday party too.
5. Holiday Mascot
It might be difficult to get into the holiday spirit when you’re working from home. You can team up with your remote employees for your virtual holiday party by asking team members to dress up. Your team can get in the holiday spirit by attending video parties in seasonal mascots. Here are some ideas:
- Elf Costumes
- Santa hat
- Green Grinch Hair
- Reindeer Antlers
6. Holiday Laughs
The end of the year should be filled with laughter and happiness. You can do this by participating in an improv comedy session with each other. Have as much fun as you can while making up random topics.
You can do it yourself or have it led by an award-winning comedian. Learn more about our Holiday Laughs with friends through the Improv Musical.
7. Escape the Party Room
If you want a fun-filled activity where there’s a new challenge for your team, you can participate in a holiday-themed escape room. It’s where you have to get out and win the game before the timer runs out.
Learn more about our Virtual Escape Room.
8. Movie Marathon
We all have our favorite movies to watch during the holidays, why not make it better and watch them with everyone? You can create your own holiday movie marathon and watch it together.
Whether it’s action or comedy, everyone can drop in and out from the marathon or simply chat in the sidebar.
9. Virtual Secret Santa
Gift exchanges recapture the fun of spending holidays in an office. No holiday party would be complete without a Secret Santa. To hold a virtual office Secret Santa, you can pick names using a gift exchange generator, then send presents, and wait to open gifts together at the online party.
You can send physical packages that add a more tactile and personal element, but teammates can also send each other virtual presents such as online gift cards or internet subscriptions.
The team can also do virtual White Elephants, which is a version of Secret Santa with wacky and impractical gifts to each other. The events typically have a “steal” mechanism, where one participant can snag a gift from another.
10. Virtual Gingerbread Builder
Gingerbread Builder is a fun, virtual holiday event that includes themed games, competitions, and actual cookies. It is a 90-minute event, conducted over a secure video conferencing line that we provide, led by a host & organized by our own planner.
Before your event, we send each of your participants a gingerbread kit in the mail that includes gingerbread people, frosting, candies, and more. Then, we bring everyone on a video call for games like holiday trivia and gingerbread self-portraits.
Learn more about Gingerbread Builder.
11. Holiday Cocktail Party
Holiday Cocktail Party is a fun, spirited virtual happy hour with a bartender host. Before your event, we will send you a shopping list or a kit delivered to your guests.
Then, on the call, your event host will teach participants how to make fun holiday drinks, and play some classy holiday games. It works for alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages like mocktails. Our host will make sure that everyone is included, engaged, and having a great time.
12. Holiday Theatre
Bring old classics to new life with this virtual celebration. virtual holiday party activity where coworkers watch and discuss a movie together on a video call.
Pick some beloved holiday movies like A Christmas Story, Home Alone, Elf, or Jingle All the Way, and then encourage employees to chat and comment on the film. Funny conversations will create a more entertaining viewing experience. “If Kevin’s mom had a cell phone, this movie would be much shorter.” It allows your team’s sense of humor to shine easily.
13. Holiday Magic Show
Bring out the magic of the holiday season by doing magic and learning new tricks. You can do it yourself with your team by watching different youtube videos or we can host it for you with a magician using a magic kit. We can send you a kit before the event or you can use items around the house.
Learn more about Virtual Magic Show.
14. Feed a Reindeer
Step out of your comfort zone and visit a farm to get to know how animals are this time of the year. Whether it’s horses, cows, or even reindeers, you and your team can not only learn more about animals but also virtually feed them too.
Learn more about Virtual Farm Visit.
15. Paint & Sip
Let your colleagues show off their artistic sides. Everyone gets a painting kit, and an instructor walks them through an interactive workshop. You can assemble the kit yourself or we have options to take care of all the details.
Learn more about our interactive Painting workshop.
16. Origami Ornaments
There’s nothing to dislike about making an adorable paper Christmas tree: no fuss, no mess, and no money to spend, making it easier for you.
Simply tell everyone to grab a sheet of A4 paper (colored or origami paper if they have it) and follow the instructions in the origami YouTube videos.
Once you’ve got a virtual forest of multi-colored fir trees, you can make other cute Christmas crafts and show them all off together.
17. Virtual Hot Chocolate Tasting Party
If your team has a sweet tooth, this is a fun way to spend time with friends at a virtual holiday party is a tasting party. Select different hot chocolate flavors, such as peppermint, white chocolate, hazelnut, caramel, French vanilla, raspberry, or spicy hot. A hot chocolate-tasting party makes it fun to try three to four different hot chocolates. You can either send out recipes, make packaged hot chocolate suggestions, or let us take care of it for you.
18. Gratitude Event
This is a virtual event that encourages philanthropy and gratitude. Each event is guided by a host. Attendees will answer trivia questions to win free Kibble for animal shelters and hunt for items to donate to food banks. At the end of this activity, your colleagues will feel as warm and fuzzy as a comfy blanket.
19. Virtual Card Exchange
Instead of wasting paper, you can opt for this sustainable way of also showing gratitude to others.
Your team can create fun cards for each other using Photoshop or free sites like Canva and then you can give awards to cards in categories like most creative or funniest.
20 Holiday Photo Booth
Since you can’t see each other in person, you can bring the fun element of photo booths by taking screenshots of everyone wearing a particular outfit like a Santa hat or colored lights, or even the same background.
21 Virtual Holiday Dinner Party
You can plan your virtual dinner party theme. You and your guests can get together and plan a menu everyone can agree on. You can have everyone 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.
Learn more about our virtual cooking class here.
22. Learn Together
Center your party’s festivities around an exciting virtual class such as a virtual painting lesson, an online cooking experience, or even a virtual cocktail making class from Teamland.
23. Holiday-Inspired Games
Get rid of initial awkwardness by playing games at your virtual parties. Take a look at our online team building games or create your own games. This will encourage employees to interact and help team members feel more comfortable with each other while building remote work skills like communication and critical thinking.
Still looking for Virtual Holiday Party Ideas for your team? Continue reading, check out the FREE Holiday Team Building Idea Generator to filter the best activity for your team, or see our Virtual Holiday Party.
24. Holiday Playlist
Typically there’s a DJ, but when it’s virtual, it can be hard to do.
Invite all of your employees to add their favorite Christmas/holiday carols to the roster. During your video call, play the playlist. Ask your team members to guess which coworker added which song, or invite employees to talk about why that song is their favorite.
25. Film Dubbing Game
If you’ve watched Whose Line Is It Anyway, you’ll know how to play this game. The show takes B or lower-rated movies and dubs in lines instead of the actual ones used. Explain the nature of improv (improvisation) prior to your party and how the game will work.
- 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.
You can do this even with classic Holiday movies.
26. Virtual Caroling
If you want to spice up your Christmas Carol session with a dash of originality in the form of Company Carols, you can instruct team members to write their own versions of classic carols. This works best if you assign specific songs to individual or small groups. This way you won’t get sick of the idea.
27. Virtual Wine Tasting Party
You can select three to four wines for your virtual tasting party or have an expert Sommelier do it for you. 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.
This way everyone can learn more about wines. See our virtual wine tasting experience.
28. Focus on wellness
As everyone is stressed this time of the year, having an off-beat event like a meditation and yoga session, your team will feel much more comfortable and relaxed.
See our virtual wellness experiences.
29. Naughty List
This is similar to Never have I ever but it’s a Holiday themed.
Each guest holds up to ten fingers. Then one member takes a turn saying “You are on the naughty list if…”
- Bought a present last minute
- Know a naughty Christmas joke
- Knocked over a Christmas tree
- Re-gifted a present
- Add more here
If a team member has committed the act, the team member will lower one finger.
The game continues for a set number of rounds, or until only one employee has fingers in the air. That person wins the game.
30. City Christmas
Since everyone is working across different parts of the city, country, or even the world, you can embrace the most wonderful time of the year and highlight your teams’ homes in the process with City Christmas.
Each person shows off how their city celebrities decorate for Christmas. It allows employees to share a bit of their “personal” lives.
31. Virtual Decorating
Since you can’t do it in person, you can decorate it together on a shared google sheet or a whiteboard tool. This way people can add to it over time if everyone can’t be connected on one call due to time zone differences.
32. Holiday Family Tradition
Each team member shares one family tradition they do during the holiday season. It could be images, videos, or even objects over a video call. You get to learn some lovely personal sides of your coworkers and even different cultures.
33. Send an E-Gift
Now, this might seem like not much of a Virtual Holiday Party idea, but once everyone sends each other E-Gifts, people can then share with each other what they bought with it. It can even be done ahead of time to share the gifts purchased.
To make it extra fun, you can combine this with the virtual secret Santa.
34. Send Decorations
If you’d like everyone to appear like you’re together, you can send festive decorations like jingle bells, and wreaths to everyone’s homes so it looks like you’re together in one place. You can even make the make dish through a cooking class, or even get it delivered.
Similar to the above, you can combine the decorations and props for a virtual photo booth. The best part about using an online platform is that you can take group photos much easier.
Gather your team onto the screen for a video call, then use screenshots or a similar image capture feature to snap a photograph.
Some props you can send our Santa hats, presents, hats, reindeer antlers, mittens, and scarves.
35. Virtual Karaoke
There’s nothing like singing your heart out during the holidays. Select the songs 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.
36. Celebrate a Variety of Holidays
When everyone is virtual and distributed across many parts of the world, people observe different holidays. You can celebrate this by including every culture that everyone’s living in at that time.
From asking members to share their culture’s unique celebration with the rest of the team, to making a traditional meal, playing a game, or performing a dance. There are a lot of options before and other Christmas traditions.
37. Showoff Christmas Trees
Whether it’s decorations around the house or even the fully decked-out Christmas tree, you can have each person show off their Christmas tree. They can even share what’s special about the different ornaments, why they decorated them that way, and any other family traditions they have around them.
38. Make a Wreath
Whether it’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter, you can create a wreath for that occasion. 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 it on their social media.
39. Holiday Story Creation
This is a fun game that becomes a story, mixed with laughter and no real plot line.
- 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.
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.
40. Virtual Tour
Since you can’t visit in person, 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 the best gingerbread houses (Christmas), or Christmas light displays and you can visit it all virtually.
41. Who’s the baby?
This can be played any time of the year, but during the Holidays, when we all tend to make more pictures, you can ask everyone to send in their baby pics during a past holiday. Then everyone else takes turns guessing who it is.
42. Holiday Photos That Tell a Story
We all have those odd photos. Before your holiday party, ask guests to select one or more photos of a past holiday that tell a story. You should mention that these should be entertaining stories either funny or heart-warming, mainly positive. Each guest should be prepared to share the story behind the photo and how it is meaningful to them.
43. Toast the team
It’s been a long year so you can keep it simple and raise a glass to highlight the bright spots or company wins during this hard time. Give department heads a prompt if you want them to prepare a word in advance, too. It can either be a few toasts or have everyone give their own toast to the team if it’s a small group.
44. Pets & Children Holiday Dress Up
If you have a group of friends who have pets or children, ask them to dress them, either in a festive costume or headgear. They should make a video of them (if they feel comfortable) to share during the virtual party since they don't always cooperate on cue. You can ask each guest to share a little about their beloved ones while showing their videos.
45. Recipe Exchange
Now that people are cooking at home more than ever, our go-to dishes might be getting a bit boring. Mix it up by trading recipes with your coworkers as a fun way to share cultural holiday cuisine. You can even have a contest for appetizers to desserts.
46. Virtual holiday dance party
Celebrate the end of a tough year by busting a move in your living room with this virtual Christmas party idea. Whether it’s a mix that everyone adds to, or using a playlist online that everyone enjoys, you can get a party going. You can even turn it into a karaoke party.
People Also Ask These Questions About Virtual Holiday Parties
Here are answers to the most common questions about virtual party ideas:
What are virtual holiday parties?
Virtual holiday parties are seasonal online gatherings that often involve unifying themes and exciting games and always lead to memories and shared laughter with friends and loved ones.
What are virtual holiday party ideas?
Virtual holiday party ideas are suggestions for online holiday parties that involve and engage remote employees. It allows companies to thank and celebrate employees for the past year’s hard work. Some ideas are a Virtual Escape Room, Online Games like Bingo and Caroling. Virtual holiday parties allow companies to include remote employees in the festivities and overall company culture. Apps like Teamland can be used to organize virtual holiday parties.
What are the best ideas for virtual holiday parties for remote teams?
The best virtual holiday parties allow employees to meet casually. Some of the best ideas for virtual holiday parties for remote teams are Gift Boxes, Escape Rooms, Holiday Playlists, and Celebrating Non-Mainstream Holidays to keep it inclusive.
What are some simple virtual office celebration ideas?
Celebrating holidays remotely can be easy. Some simple virtual office celebration ideas include a Virtual Card Exchange, Holiday Happy Hour, Watching a Movie together, and Dressing Up.
What are some virtual holiday party ideas for small companies?
Some virtual holiday party ideas for small companies include having an online beer and cheese tasting or playing trivia. You can find a full list of party ideas in this post.
What are some virtual holiday party ideas for large companies?
Large companies should take advantage of virtual holiday party ideas that rely on premium vendors, such as Teamland. Find a full list of party ideas in this post.
How do you make a virtual Christmas party?
To make a virtual Christmas party, first, decide which date and time people are available. After that decide on what team building activities you would like to include. If you do not plan your party, then you may have a harder time keeping everyone entertained and interacting come party time. After all that, you can send out the invitations and enjoy your party.
What do you do at a virtual party?
At virtual parties, remote employees join the party to socialize with coworkers, play games, and celebrate the holiday with fun online activities.
What are virtual holiday games?
Virtual holiday games are seasonal activities that you can play with your teammates over video conference platforms like Teamland, Zoom, and WebEx. These games combine the collaboration of online team-building games with holiday themes.
What are the best virtual holiday party games?
Online holiday games embrace the seasonal spirit and help remote group members connect through fun and creative challenges. The best virtual holiday party games are Tradition or not? Never Have I Ever holiday edition, and an online holiday scavenger hunt.
What are some good Christmas games to play on Zoom?
Some good Christmas games to play on Zoom include Secret Santa, virtual holiday trivia, and seasonal buzzwords.
What is a Zoom holiday party?
A Zoom holiday party is an online holiday party that takes place over the video conference platform Zoom. These parties are a subset of virtual holiday parties or virtual Christmas parties.
