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Holiday Activities for Your Organization
by Carren W. Joye

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, plan something special for your organization this holiday season besides, or in addition to, exchanging gifts. Here are a several ideas for adults and their children:

Gift Exchange
Drawing names for a gift exchange is a traditional activity at Christmas. Add to the fun by making it a Secret Santa gift exchange. Keep the names secret and write only the recipient’s name on the tag, either with or without a description of the gift giver. Each person will have to figure out who brought the gift before they can open it. Another fun activity is to write a description of the gift on the card and have the recipient guess what is inside before opening the gift.

For children, play Musical Presents. Have each child bring a generic gift that they would like for themselves; for example, a boy brings a gift for a boy, and a girl brings a gift for a girl. Gather in circles of all boys and all girls and play Christmas music while the presents go around the circles. When the music stops, everyone opens the present they are holding.

A variation on this goes along with a story and works well for adults and children. The adults or children sit in a circle with the gift they brought in their laps. Choose a story with a repetitive word, such as The Gingerbread Man. Every time the words 'ran' or 'run' are spoken, instruct the participants to pass their gift to the person on their right. Alternatively, you can make up your own silly Christmas story using the words 'right' and 'left' frequently. Continue passing the gifts until the story is over. At the end of the story, everyone gets to open and keep the gift in his lap.

Instead of exchanging gifts of any type, specify a specific kind of gift for an ornament party, a candle party, or a book party. Children particularly enjoy ornaments and books.

White Elephant
A fun variation on gift-giving is the White Elephant gift exchange. Everyone brings a gift already wrapped, either a gag gift or something nice, but set a price limit. Do not put tags on the gifts. Prepare numbered slips of paper in advance and have each person draw a number. People choose gifts in order according their number.

The person with number 1 picks out a gift and opens it so all can see what it is. Then the person with number 2 can “steal” that gift or chose from those not yet opened. Then person number 3 gets to “steal” any already opened gift or chose one of the gifts still unopened. This continues around the circle. If someone steals your gift, you can select another gift to open or steal someone else's gift, but a gift can only be “stolen” once during a turn. Also, once a gift has had three “owners,” the third owner of the gift gets to keep it, and it can't be stolen again. Depending on how creative and coveted the gifts are, this game can be very fun with people always stealing certain gifts or trying to hide their favorites to keep them from being stolen.

Cookie Exchange
Host a cookie exchange. Ask everyone to bring their favorite homemade cookies, made 2-3 days in advance of the exchange; the number of cookies depends on the number of participants, but generally about 2-3 dozen per person. Either specify no chocolate chip cookies or assign each person a different type of cookie to bake, so you won't have everyone making the same kind. In addition, everyone needs to make copies of their recipes, or send you the recipe in advance so you can create a little booklet of recipes for each guest.

Don't eat the cookies during the exchange. Instead, serve other snacks and allow everyone to take a few cookies from each batch home with them. If you decide to sample some of the cookies during the exchange, make sure to increase the number of cookies that each participant brings.

During the exchange, everyone shares a story about their cookies, such as the origin of the recipe or a funny memory of baking them. As a result, guests leave the cookie exchange with dozens of different cookies to start the holiday season and nearly as many warm and funny stories!

Include the kids on the fun! Get the children or spouses to serve as taste testers and judges, and offer prizes for the most delicious, most beautiful and most unusual cookie.

Decorate Cookies
Kids love to decorate and eat cookies! Make 10 various Christmas shape sugar cookies or gingerbread men per child so there will be plenty to eat and take home. Set out containers of white frosting and various decorations for the cookies, such as colored sprinkles, mini-marshmallows, chocolate chips, M&Ms, jelly beans, and raisins. You can provide Popsicle sticks to spread the frosting. Each child will go home with a box of decorated cookies, if they don't eat them all!

For an alternative, make small gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, using icing to glue them together. Pre-assemble them for the kids to decorate. Ask the parents to bring something edible with them to use to decorate the houses, and you will have quite an assortment of decorations to use for decorating your gingerbread houses.

Covered Dish Dinner
Share a Christmas dinner during the last date before the holiday break and have everyone bring a covered dish. To prevent too many green bean casseroles, plan in advance what each person will bring. Chip in together on the cost of the meat, whether ham or turkey or some other choice. Use holiday paper plates, napkins and cups to make the meal festive.

Progressive Dinner
At a Progressive Dinner your group plans a meal together where each course is served at a different participant's home, and the party progresses from house to house. A progressive dinner works best with friends who live close to one another in a neighborhood, an apartment building or a condo complex. This even works well for offices in a large company. Then everyone can walk from home to home or office to office without worrying about organizing cars and wasting time driving to the different locations. However, if driving is a necessity, plan for a 3-hour evening at minimum.

When planning your dinner, schedule about 3-4 courses so there won't be too much time wasted on progressing. Potential courses may include hors d'oeuvres and cocktails; appetizer; a first course such as soup, salad or pasta; main course including side dishes; cheese, fruit and nuts; and dessert.

Caroling
Go Christmas caroling. Pick several neighbors' homes in advance, or a nursing home, homeless shelter or hospital ward. Prepare a sheet of paper with the lyrics to some favorite carols and make copies for everyone; if done in advance, everyone will have a chance to practice. Consider bringing goodies or small gifts to distribute after singing. Or, bring decorations made by the children and help decorate the Christmas tree.

Special Guest
Invite Santa or Mrs. Claus to read Twas the Night Before Christmas or other holiday stories to the children in your organization. The local librarian may be willing to dress up as Mrs. Claus. To make it even more fun for the children, ask them to bring a letter for Mrs. Claus to take home to Santa.

Hire someone or ask a friend to dress as Santa Claus. Give each child an opportunity to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what they want for Christmas. Parents can take pictures of their child with Santa, which is much less stressful than standing in line at the mall. Santa can end the visit by passing out little toys or gifts previously bought by the parents.

Games
Play games with the children. Pin the Nose on Frosty and Pin the Nose on the Reindeer are two variations of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Pass the Candy Cane is played like hot potato, except the children pass a large candy cane until the music stops. The person with the candy cane at the end of the game gets to keep it.

In Pass the Present, wrap a small Christmas chocolate Santa or candy cane in a tiny box, then put it in a bigger wrapped box, inside a bigger wrapped box, inside a bigger box, etc. Alternatively, wrap the gift in several layers of different Christmas wrapping paper. To play the game, everyone pass the gift around while Christmas music plays, and when the music stops whoever is holding the present gets to open it before stepping out of the circle. The gift continues around the circle until the last box is opened or the last layer of paper is unwrapped. The person who unwraps the final box gets to keep the item.

Both children and adults would enjoy playing charades or Pictionary using the names of Christmas carols or Christmas movies.

Organize a scavenger hunt. Group participants into pairs or trios and have them find items in the house, office complex or in the neighborhood, weather permitting. Include items such as a red bow, candle, Christmas cookie, religious Christmas card, mistletoe, broken ornament, and burned-out tree light. Or include items in various holiday colors, such as red, green, gold, silver and white.

Happy Birthday, Jesus
Invite the children and have a birthday party for Jesus. After some time to play, read the Christmas Story, but include the children in the story. Choose a book that describes each of the people that were a part of the birth of Jesus and give each child a figure from a nativity scene. When you get to each person from the story, have each child place the figure on the table set up for the scene. At the end of the story the whole nativity scene will be set up.

Have a birthday cake and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. Let the kids blow out the candles.

For gifts, have each child bring a $10-15 gift. Then go to the children’s ward of a hospital, a homeless shelter, or a lower income school in the area and distribute the gifts to the children. Be sure to make arrangements in advance with those in charge of the hospital, shelter or school.

Using some of these ideas as a springboard, you may come up with other ideas on your own. Or combine several for a truly memorable holiday party!

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