Christmas season is that wonderful time of the year when family, friends, and colleagues can get together for fun and sharing. However, it’s not always possible to gather everyone in a single room for a festive celebration. Thanks to technology, it’s now possible to celebrate the holidays even when you are miles away from your loved ones. Here are a few awesome ideas to enjoy Christmas in the virtual world.
Send virtual Christmas cards
You can still send traditional Christmas cards but it could take a while to reach your loved ones. So, why not create a virtual card instead? You can use stock photos and add real photos of you or your family as you send messages of love, joy, and happiness. There are apps that also let you create your own designs from scratch so go ahead and let your creativity flow.
Create personalized video greetings
If you want something more festive and more personal, create an animated video card with some stock footage, cheerful background music, and record your greetings using a screen or webcam recorder. More specific create an animated video card or an online video editor with some stock footage. Send the video through email, through a messenger app, or share the link to your family and friends.
Play virtual games
Virtual games are awesome activities for virtual office Christmas parties. Popular online games that a group of people can play include online BINGO, song trivias, Christmas quizzes, scribble, and escape games.Â
You can also host friendly competitions like best Christmas-themed costumes, ugliest sweaters, or a virtual karaoke night. Prizes can be virtual as well, like money sent through bank transfers or virtual wallets, digital gift certificates, or gift items that can be shipped through couriers.
Throw a virtual Christmas party
If you can’t come together to celebrate Christmas eve, why not do it over Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet? You can spend the night sharing stories, eating your Christmas dinners, opening gifts, and more.Â
For company parties, you can send a party invitation and kit to each employee with supplies that they can use or open during the virtual party. The kit could include food (or money to buy dinner), wine, party hats, balloons, and gifts. Everyone can sport a Christmas-themed virtual background to boost the holiday spirit online.
Secret santa gift exchange
Set up a gift exchange activity by asking everyone for their wish lists, match each one with who to give gifts to, set a specific gift worth, and setting a deadline for when gifts should be sent to the recipient. Then, when everyone has sent and received their gifts, everyone can all meet up online to open their gifts and find out who made their wishes come true.
Christmas meme or GIF game
Laughter is the best medicine and it could bring people together in a time when gathering isn’t quite possible just yet. Invite family, friends, or colleagues to create funny memes and GIFs using an online video editor. These should be related to Christmas or the New Year and can feature people, pets, food, or animated characters. Gather all the entries and play them all during a Zoom video call so participants can vote for their favorites.
Paint and sip activity
This has been a popular virtual activity for different occasions and events so why not do it on Christmas eve? Through a video call, an artist will guide all the participants in painting a masterpiece while everyone enjoys a glass of wine. Then when everyone’s done painting, everyone can share pictures of their work. You can then create a montage or slideshow of the completed works and share them with everyone.
You can try out other activities similar to this. Instead of painting, it can be decorating sugar cookies, assembling a gingerbread house, making chocolate truffles, learning a craft, and more.
Keeping the holiday spirit alive—virtually
The holiday season is different nowadays as more and more people are working remotely and certain circumstances are preventing people from gathering together. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t get all festive. Taking advantage of technology, it’s now possible to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world through the internet.
Fortunately, there are a lot of online tools and apps that people can use to meet, greet, and celebrate Christmas in the virtual world. It may seem intimidating but most are quite easy to use and navigate. So, there’s no need to feel grim and glum about the absence of face-to-face or in-person interactions. We can still keep the holiday spirit alive even in a virtual setting.
