When it comes to entertaining, Christmas is open season. But organizing a party that’s inviting to the whole family presents a unique challenge: how do you allow parents to relax and mingle without risking an outbreak of kid chaos or “When are we leaving?” boredom for the littlies? The Kidspot Christmas Party Plan is the easy way.
Is a Christmas party right for you
Not all of us want to entertain a raft of people, especially at Christmas time. It’s certainly not compulsory, but a Christmas party is a great way to catch up with all the friends you’d like to see in one easy timeslot before the holidays get out of hand. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than simply asking friends over at a designated “open house” time so people can drop in and drop out as their own calendar dictates.
Try different Christmas party ideas
A party can be as elaborate as a catered affair in a hired marquee in a backyard or as simple as a fresh morning tea in the lounge room. How you entertain is entirely up to you. To enhance grown-up merrymaking with children around, it helps to offer a range of party foods and activities that appeal to both kids and adults.
A house-to-house party
This idea only works for neighbours or school families who live close by. Maximize the fun of entertaining and minimize the cleaning up by planning a house-to-house celebration. Each family pitches in, providing food or drinks, and the group travels from one home to the next feasting on treats, admiring decorations, and enjoying one another’s company.
A cocktail party
This one is best for adults only and means any friends with kids will have to organise babysitters (as may you if you think the kids will be rowdy!)
A Christmas picnic
For those who prefer to create more of a family affair, Christmas picnics are great in places where daylight savings offers light, balmy summer’s evenings. A picnic is also a perfect low-cost way for lots of friends to get together on a weekend and bring their own food and drink to share. Throw in a sausage sizzle, a few swing ball, french cricket or touch games for children and get one of the picnic attendees to don a Santa suit and hand out lollies, and it’s one of the easiest Christmas get togethers
With having family out of town our Christmases tend to be pretty full on unless they are at home. We do one family for lunch and then the other family for tea then another family catch up on Boxing day this year. In other years we have done separate days for each family, we have combined two families on Christmas day. For us its about making it work so we see and get to spend time with both families – Christmas is a time for spending with family. I think you have to do what works for you.
I like the pinic idea, easy to prepare food for. The kids run around and wear off energy and the grown ups get to have a real conversation without being interrupted . This is my usual go to with friends and family. This year it has been particularly busy and the build up to xmas seems impossible to fit everything in and one group of friends wanted to catch up, i said I was free on Sat night but only for an hour and apologize feeling a bit stink for saying i could only commit to an hour for my friends. My friends all confided to me later that they were so relieved and glad i had done that as they were really busy to and by doing that they could catch up but it wasn’t a big time commitment at a busy time of year
Back in our country, our Christmas tradition was to stay till 12 midnight on Christmas evening, we all greet each other Merry Christmas and we would have Noche Buena and have tapas, hot choco, Christmas ham, crackers. Then we would have our family exchange gift. It’s just one of those that I hope I could also do for our own family.
I really like the idea of a Christmas picnic. Packing up bbq stuff for a beach trip or just to a local pool park. That would be my idea of fun. Traveling around houses is a lot of work usually (the way we do it) and often a lot of clean up pre-visit when you just want to relax a bit.
Every year we mix our Christmas up between my in-laws and hosting my family at our home. My family always bring food to share and we usually do a cooked breakfast and then we bring food to contribute to my in-laws lunch/dinner. The best thing is they live next door so not too far to go 🙂
There are some really neat ideas in this article. Love the house to house one what a great way to share the responsibility and cost etc with everyone and neat way to her to know your neighbors and community too.
We’ve done the family picnic a few times has made it a very relaxed no pressure time and been at the beach too so free entertainment and no mess to clean up.
There are some great ideas! I like the House to house party idea, what a lovely way to spend Christmas! I don’t think that I would like to host an entire Christmas day for my friends and extended family but sharing the responsibility with a few other people would be great!
We did a big Christmas lunch at my Nana’s for my dads partners last Christmas as she had cancer and didn’t have long to live 😔 so this year we have decided to do something a little different and go camping this Christmas so I’d say a kiwi BBQ will be on the agenda this Christmas not just the traditional normal Christmas with the whole family this it’ll be just us four to be a little different and more peaceful lol
We always do a Christmas with all the family and have games for the kids like cricket, tennis, bikes out to play on and any small toys for the little ones. Before Christmas we try have a few friends with children over for an easy bbq all the kids play together and have lots of fun together.
We don’t really have family close to have the big Christmas dinner etc, so it’s just me, my partner and our daughter (plus it’s her birthday on Boxing Day, so double parties!). We generally either do a BBQ weather dependant or just a nice big feed and go for a walk, then just relax for the rest of the afternoon 🙂