Give your office and staff the gift of joy and fun at this year’s corporate Christmas and Hanukkah party. Whether your business has hundreds of employees or just a handful, you can show your appreciation for a years’ hard work with a great end of year celebration. Truly showing your staff appreciation, however, should involve more than buying a cheese and cracker platter at the local grocery store and putting on a Christmas playlist.

Even for those smaller businesses with lower budgets, you can inject more fun into your holiday celebrations with a few additions. With Corporate Christmas party ideas, you can make your small business Christmas party fun and exciting for everyone.

Family Day With Santa

Everyone loves Santa, including your office. You can find no one better to help your office kick off the holiday season. Encourage your parents on staff to bring their children for a few hours to enjoy a visit with Santa. Your office can make the season even brighter by providing cookies, milk, hot chocolate, and inexpensive “Dollar Store” type presents for each child to open. Children from one to 92 will love sharing their Christmas lists with Santa, making your office party a memorable hit.

Food Truck Fun

In recent years, food trucks and events have exploded in popularity in cities across the globe. They offer incredible varieties of street food from around the world right here on the streets of Melbourne.

Some larger businesses have started their own tradition of inviting a number of different food trucks to their establishment as part of a company Christmas party. This can provide (usually) inexpensive and high-quality food for staff while saving on corporate Christmas party catering costs. You may even consider providing a small stipend to help to pay for your employees’ meals as well. This can also serve as the beginning of a long term and mutually beneficial relationship between your business and at least one food truck if your company has sufficient business to attract it regularly.

Decade Theme

In our experience, many planning a company Christmas party have found success in incorporating themes. You could adopt a “decade” theme, either selecting a single decade or encouraging staff to “represent” the decade in which they grew up. Fun theme activities could include dressing up in wacky styles from the era, serving food popular at the time, but considered obscure now, and more. You could also set up activities specific to one or more decades, such as an Atari 2600 video game contest. With endless Christmas album choices over the years, you can even tailor the music to the decades celebrated.

Nontraditional Tree Contest

A lot of fun company Christmas party ideas revolve around taking normal office items and whimsically repurposing them for holiday celebrations. One clever twist on a classic decoration theme lies in holding a non-traditional tree contest. Staff can use their creativity to assemble and decorate “trees” made of anything. For example, they can stack a set of rarely used books into a Christmas tree shape and decorate with coloured adhesive notes cut into ornament shapes. Ideas can range from the funny and whimsical into the truly artistic. These would look great in either two or three dimensions.

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Ugly Sweater Day

In the past generation, we have all seen the growth of the ugly sweater tradition at Christmas. “Ugly” sweaters give us all a chance to laugh at ourselves a little bit while joining into the festivities and rituals of the season. Holding a contest to determine the most garish sweater puts a lot of laughs into corporate Christmas party activities. The leadership team can even buy for itself ugly sweaters based on the business logo. There are numerous directions in which you can take this theme, all of them making your company Christmas party fun and hilarious.

Old Fashioned Pot Luck With a Twist

Pot lucks provide a great example for your staff to have fun and also to share of themselves. Smaller companies rely on these for celebrations because it reinforces the ideals of teamwork and family atmosphere without having to spend a lot of money.

The biggest problem with pot luck parties lies in the time spent to make something truly delicious.  Many resorts to simply buying ready-made food at a store or ordering large amounts of take out. You can inject more inspiration into your Christmas party pot luck by awarding small prizes for various categories. This theme provides your staff with the opportunity to build team dynamics through sharing.

Sports-Themed Company Christmas Party

Whether you and your staff love to follow rugby, cricket, or football of the Australian, international, or North American style, sports-themed Christmas parties can inject a lot of fun into the event. Few cities in Australia can match Melbourne’s passion for sports. With A League Soccer, basketball, and cricket in season during the Christmas holidays, this provides even more opportunity to celebrate the city’s sports teams at your party.

Christmas Song Karaoke

No need to to have a silent night at your corporate Christmas party. Your business can have itself a merry little Christmas with holiday karaoke. Though Melbourne will never see a white Christmas, still, it is the most wonderful time of the year and music puts warmth and joy into any holiday event. If last Christmas your company party fell short of the mark, karaoke will make sure that you and your staff enjoy a holly jolly Christmas.

Bowling Party

Corporate Christmas party games need not only take place at the office. For not much more than a standard Christmas office party with all of the trimmings, you can take your team to fun off site. A bowling party provides another opportunity for your team to enjoy Christmas with each other at a fun social event. Even those who do not like to bowl themselves can enjoy the atmosphere and other games usually found in bowling establishments. Most bowling alleys have enough space to comfortably include small to moderate numbers of party goers. The best part is, you do not have to worry as much about planning and cleanup.

Ugly Fruitcake (Or Other Dessert) Cookoff

Fairly or unfairly, the humble fruitcake receives less love than almost any other Christmas treat. Although still given as gifts and featured as after Christmas desserts, the fruitcake still serves up more jokes than praise. For those outside the know, fruitcake is a dense baked good stuffed with candied fruits and spices. When well done, it explodes with delicious sweet flavors. Commercial cakes, however, often turn out overly sweet, dry, and heavy, leading to its less than lovely culinary reputation which currently rests on the same level as American cheese.

In the spirit of the Netflix hit Nailed It, your office can host an ugly fruitcake or dessert cook off. No need to show off perfection when the goal lies in entertainment and deliciousness. This can especially be fun at Christmas parties for small companies.

Sports Day

Christmas ideas for smaller companies can include exciting outings. You can build on the sports theme idea described earlier by actually taking a small team to a game. The team will enjoy watching the game whether you rent a luxury box or purchase adjoining seats. Either way, your Christmas celebration at the game will provide fun memories.

Christmas Dinner Crawl

Another great idea perfect for very small businesses is the Christmas dinner crawl. If you and your staff live relatively close to each other in Melbourne or the surrounding area, this could work well. The idea is based on that of the pub crawl. A Christmas dinner crawl takes a group from home to home. The first offers appetisers, the second a main course, and the third, a dessert. Sharing with food forms a fundamental part of holidays and humanity. A dinner crawl brings your team together in a new and fun fashion. Try it for your next company Christmas party!