Christmas is almost here and the holiday season is in full swing. Even if you don’t necessarily celebrate Christmas, it’s easy to get swept up by the colorful illuminations, holiday tunes, and general cozy atmosphere that it has become known for across the world.
Christmas, at its core, is about spending quality time with the people around you. It’s about giving and sharing, and spreading warmth to your community. Which means that Christmas has some natural connections to team building, and can be a great excuse to plan a fun holiday-themed activity for your team.
However, this year, just like last year, it might be difficult to do anything with your team in-person. Luckily, there are lots of ideas out there for you to plan a fun and engaging online team building event this Christmas. In the following post, we’ve collected a bunch of them for you to use at your own online Christmas-themed team building events.
Just as a reminder, even the simplest of activities can be beneficial for your team. It doesn’t need to be complicated at all. Just make sure that you invest some quality time and that your team is enjoying themselves, and you’ll easily be able to brighten up these dark winter days with a little holiday cheer. Plus, you’ll create great shared memories for your team to bond over.
So, without further ado, let’s deck the halls and get some chestnuts roasting…here are 7 great Christmas-themed online activities!
1. Holiday online trivia
Trivia is a really fun activity to do online with your team (trust us, we love playing it for our own parties). It’s really simple to execute too–all you need to do is collect trivia questions and present them in a slide show.
Also, Christmas is a good theme for trivia. There’s so many interesting Christmas traditions from around the world that you can use, and each culture seems to have a completely different conception of Santa Claus. It can be a great way to learn together, especially if you have an international team.
2. Holiday cocktail party
Christmas has quite a few cocktails that are traditionally associated with it: mulled wine, eggnog, spiked hot chocolate, hot buttered rum. Plus there’s a whole bevy of more modern holiday-themed drinks, which you can peruse here.
You can pick one or two and make them together on Zoom. Or you can each make your own individually and then try to guess what each other made. Either way, it will make for some conversation and fill your team with holiday spirit.
3. Cookie decorating
For this one, you can bake your own cookies together, or simply buy some plain cookies and decorate them to make things easier. Christmas has a lot of iconic characters and symbols, like snowmen and Christmas trees, so there is an endless amount of ideas for decorating. You can even make a competition for the best-decorated cookie for some extra fun.
4. Gift exchange
Giving gifts is such a central part of Christmas, so why not try a gift exchange with your team? You can set a reasonable amount for people to spend, and choose names secretly. It might take a little bit of planning ahead to make sure everyone sends their gifts ahead of time (assuming you want to open them at the same time). But it will be a nice little surprise to get a gift in the mail, and you can have fun talking about the gifts you all received.
5. Host a fried-chicken cooking party
This is inspired by the now-famous Japanese tradition of eating Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas. But instead of going out and buying some, why not try making your own? Have a little cooking party with your team and whip up a fresh batch (here’s a recipe you can use).
6. Holiday dress-up
Again, with so many iconic characters, you can easily host a Christmas-themed dress up party. It will lighten the mood and give your online party a little more excitement. Prizes could be awarded to the most creative costume, and will be fun to see what your coworkers can come up with. There’s an extra challenge too, since online means you have to focus on the head and face.
7. Carol singing/ Christmas sing-along
“Caroling” is a Christmas tradition in many countries, where singers go around to people’s houses and sing Christmas songs for them. And Christmas has tons of iconic songs, some of which are pretty famous around the world like “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells”. Have yourselves a merry little Christmas by hosting a sing-along with your team. Lots of countries have their own songs and lyrics, so again, this could be a fun one for international teams.
8. Holiday charades
Charades is a fun game to play anytime. All you need to do is choose a number of characters or phrases. Players then take turns acting these out without using any words, while the rest of the players try to guess what they are acting.
For a Christmas version, simply use characters and things related to the holiday, like Santa, elves, reindeer, Christmas tree, etc. Online it can be more difficult to guess what people are doing, which simply adds to the fun.
Conclusion
We hope these ideas give you some inspiration when it comes to planning Christmas activities for your team. As we said before, the most important thing is that your team members have fun and enjoy spending time together. Even if you don’t end up planning a Christmas team building activity, a lot of these activities can easily be adjusted to make them more generic. And you can also always use these activities with your family and friends. Enjoy the holidays, and Merry Christmas!
Invite Japan designs and creates unique and original team building programs, including online games, outdoor scavenger hunts, and more. We offer a wide range of programs to fit your needs and ensure that your team has the best team building experience possible.
Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash
