Stressing about planning your next corporate winter holiday event this year? Looking to plan something more unique than a Christmas lunch for your team? 

Then here are 9 unique work Christmas party ideas that are guaranteed to make your employees and their families immediately respond yes to your RSVP as soon as they receive the invite!

Have a small office? A pre-written festive murder mystery party filled with mischievous sleuthing fun can be the perfect way to start the holiday season! Choose a festive mystery such as who killed Santa Claus, unwrap the fun, or murder at an ugly sweater party. Next, encourage participants to dress accordingly, or bring props to the party. Finally, hand out the roles, storyline, and let the games begin!

Wearing an ugly sweater to a holiday party is one of the quintessential joys of Christmas work parties and can sometimes be a little *yawn* boring.

But an ugly sweater crafting station with the challenge of creating the UGLIEST sweater on the day of? Now things are getting more interesting! On the day of the party, encourage your participants to come dressed in a plain sweater or T-shirt they’re willing to decorate (great places to find these include: your local thrift store, Old Navy, Costco, Walmart, etc.).

Then, provide embellishments like string lights, bows, ornaments, random plastic toys, tinsel, pipe cleaners, pins, glue gun, white glue and let your employees get messy!

Tip: Make sure you have table covers and are working in an area with an easy to clean floor to make cleaning a cinch.

Discover new traditions with your team while learning more about how the holidays are celebrated around the world with a Christmas/Xmas Around the World theme. During the holiday season, almost every country, religion, and culture has their own way to celebrate around the holiday seasons.

Encourage people to bring a range of traditional foods from different cultures and play a medley of holiday and seasonal songs from around the globe to celebrate your team’s diversity. For extra fun, set up a quiz that challenges your team members to answer questions about different Christmas traditions and holiday trivia.

Flip the holiday attire this year from your cocktail/black tie best to the coziest pajama party. Many people’s favorite part of the holidays is snuggling into the couch with a cup of hot cocoa, opening presents in pajamas.

Encourage attendees to wear their seasonally-themed pajamas, or the fuzziest set of pjs they own and award a prize to the best dressed pjs. Serve Christmas-morning breakfast foods like Eggnog bread pudding, candied bacon, white chocolate croissant bread pudding.

Consider adding a puppy social to your next holiday corporate party. Picture this. You’ve sent out the RSVPs to your company’s employees with some cute photos of puppies in tiny holiday hats. In it, there’s an invitation to formally invite your employees to experience holiday cheer with an entourage of cute puppies to greet them at the entrance of your next corporate party. 

The best part? When your employees play with the puppies, it’s a win-win for both your people and the puppies! Socializing puppies at a young age to a variety of different, gentle loving people helps set them up to become more confident adult dogs in the future too! And on the other side, playing with pups is an instant mood boost (it’s basically pet therapy).

Paired with the immediate mental boost from petting puppies, a cute photo booth setup to capture the memories and we think you’ll have one of the most memorable and talked about work Christmas parties for years to come!

Who doesn’t love an acrobatic act? If you’re looking for a guaranteed jaw-dropping reaction from your guests, then look into gifting your employees a custom corporate acrobatic show. Select from an array of amazing feats of human flexibility, strength, and balance, or marvel with fiery hula hoop shows, or captivate your guests with an entertaining aerialist show. 

Looking for a way to incorporate active fun to your work Christmas party? Then grab yourself several boxes of indoor snowballs and host a friendly competition against your colleagues with a massive indoor snowball fight! Made of soft cotton-like fibrous materials, indoor snowballs are a perfectly harmless way to safely bring the nostalgic fun and relieve some of the pent-up holiday stress.

Is there a better way to spread holiday cheer than to give to those in need? Host a charity build a bike team building event where your employees can learn how to build a bike AND feel good donating the bike to a charity too. There are a variety of event planning organizations that work with local children organizations to help you host these heartwarming events in your city. Not only is this event a great opportunity to practice teamwork and collaboration, but you and your company can help bring about a positive change to children in need!

Looking to celebrate the holiday seasons with an eco-friendly alternative to decorating your trees with tinsel and ribbon? Then consider decorating an outdoor tree with edible birdseed ornaments! Host a party with your work colleagues and ask them to bring pinecones, halved orange rinds, branches, and bring in the seeds, berries, fruits and nuts as décor. A truly great activity for day-time family-friendly work Christmas events!

Whether you’re looking to give your coworkers a night to remember with a unique festive holiday party, an unconventional experiential holiday party, or a heartwarming Christmas party event, use this list as a source of inspiration for your next holiday party!

Every office and workplace has a different vibe, atmosphere, and budget for their holiday parties, so customize each of these ideas to fit the needs of your group. At the end of the day, Christmas and the holiday season should be a time of joy, connection, and genuine celebration, so trade those standard corporate holiday parties for something memorable on this list!

For more bespoke corporate Christmas party service with puppies, check out Puppysphere’s private puppy events.