Festive Fun: Activities for the Festive Season

With November coming to a close, the time for tinsel and fairy lights has arrived! To help you make the most of this festive season, we’ve compiled a list of some fun activities to help you keep busy while building beautiful memories with your loved ones! From baking gingerbread biscuits to cosy movie nights, there are so many wonderful activities to explore. Let’s get started!

#1: Ginger Biscuits

Baking is always a fun activity, and the festive season is no exception. The recipe below is a great activity to do with the kids, or even just as a fun afternoon pastime. If you feel like getting creative with your shapes, collect a few different shapes of cookie cutters for variations. Plus, if you’re running low on Christmas decorations, you can try creating a small hole on one end of your biscuits and attaching a ribbon to create beautiful, edible decorations for your tree. For decorating the biscuits, you can either create your own icing using butter, icing sugar and food colouring, or simply buy pre-made icing to save time.

Ingredients:

• 225g plain flour & extra for dusting
• A pinch of salt
• 2tsp bicarbonate of soda
• Ground ginger
• Ground cinnamon
• 75g Unsalted butter
• 100g Soft brown sugar
• 100g Golden syrup
• Your choice of icing

Method:

Step 1: Sieve the flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda, group ginger and cinnamon into a large bowl.

Step 2: Heat the butter and add the syrup and sugar, stirring until all the sugar has dissolved.

Step 3: Allow the butter, sugar and syrup to cool slightly before adding to the dry ingredients to form a dough.

Step 4: Place the dough in the fridge to cool for 30 minutes. While the dough cools, preheat the oven to 190C and line your baking tray with baking paper.

Step 5: Dust an even surface with flour and roll the dough to a ¼-inch thickness.

Step 6: Use your cookie cutters to cut out shapes and then gently arrange them on the baking tray with some space between them as they will expand in the oven. Offcuts can be re-rolled in order to cut more shapes.

Step 7: Once your baking tray is full, place the biscuits in the oven and cook for 10-15 minutes.

Step 8: After removing your biscuits from the oven, leave them to cool for a while before decorating.

Step 9: Using either store-bought or homemade icing, you can now decorate your gingerbread men. If you wish to create detailed icing designs but don’t have many tools at your disposal, a simple sandwich bag with a small cut in the corner works wonders.

#2: Secret Santa (with a twist!)

There are many games involving Christmas presents, all with different rules and a long list of names. These games are great for smaller celebrations between friends or colleagues. Additionally, they work well in large groups, especially if you’d like to keep your Christmas present budget a little on the lower end. You may know a few of these under different names, but perhaps you’ll find some interesting twists that add a whole new dynamic to the occasion!

Secret Santa:

One of the more popular gifting games, Secret Santa starts with a collection of names in a hat. The group decides on a budget per gift, and everyone draws a name. You buy a gift for whoever’s name you happen to pull out. This way, everyone can focus their full attention (and budget!) on a single gift. Secret Santa is particularly popular among colleagues.

Rules and Variations:

Option 1: Option one essentially ends with the handing over of the gifts. Each person hands their gift over to the person whose name they drew, and the evening progresses with friendly banter over how well everyone did at finding the perfect gift.

Option 2 (Guess the Gifter): Here, everyone takes a name from the hat, buys their gift, and wraps it. In this version, however, the aim is for the gifter to remain anonymous. All of the gifts are placed on a table together, and one person is designated as Father Christmas. Father Christmas hands out the gifts one by one. Once everyone has opened their gifts, the guessing game begins! Everyone has 3 tries to guess who got their name, opening the door to an evening shrouded in mystery.

Option 3 (The Grinch): In this version, there’s no need for names in hats. Instead of picking out a gift for a specific person, everyone chooses a gift of some sort, within an agreed-upon budget. All the gifts get wrapped up and placed on a table. When the time for gifting arrives, fill a hat with numbers on pieces of paper. Everyone picks out a number and chooses gifts off the table in order of which number they picked. So, for example, if you had a group of 19 people, you’d drop the numbers 1-19 into the hat, and everyone would draw one. Once the numbers have been drawn and the game begins, things get a little more interesting! Rather than being limited to what’s still on the table, each person can choose to either pick a new gift or to seal someone else’s. Going with our group of 19, the 19th player could take his or her pick from any of the open gifts, or choose the last gift on the table. When someone decides to steal a gift, they must pick a wrapped gift from the table and swap it for the unwrapped gift currently belonging to someone else. This version of the game works fantastically if you’ve got a large group of people who don’t know each other very well, and is sure to lead to an evening of laughter and beautiful memories. Having said that, this game is best played with older groups, as younger souls don’t always appreciate their gifts being traded.

#3: Christmas Movie Night

Nothing says cosy like curling up on the sofa with a blanket, a steaming cup of hot chocolate, and a lineup of your favourite Christmas movies. A Christmas movie night is a perfect way to bring family or friends together for a relaxed evening of festive fun. There are so many heartwarming films to pick from. Between old classics like It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and newer, family-friendly options like The Polar Express (2004), your Christmas movie night could take any direction! You could even dive into Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, or (1993), or take a trip down memory lane with Home Alone (1990). Either way, you’ll be in for a warm and relaxing night of festive fun.

The festive season is about making memories, sharing joy, and having fun together. Whether you’re baking ginger biscuits, enjoying a game of Secret Santa with a twist, or hosting a Christmas movie night, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Bringing your loved ones together is a lovely thing to do at this time of year, and our Party Houses are the perfect place to do that. With large houses dotted throughout the UK, we’re perfectly positioned to help you find the ideal house for your Christmas parties and family reunions. All of these Christmas activities can be taken to the next level in our immaculate accommodations! You could bake ginger biscuits in a slick and spacious kitchen, or enjoy movie nights in your own private cinema room. The possibilities are endless…