3 ideas for Christmas entertaining
Jolly party ideas for when you’ve got friends and family coming round.
12 Days of Christmas
• Invite everyone to come in costume inspired by the song.
• Theme your food – boiled eggs with celery salt are really easy for your ‘six geese a-laying’, make pastry cheese strings in ‘gold ring’ shapes and offer chicken canapés for the ‘French hens’!
• Make biscuits in the shape of boys and girls then put them out along with some tubes of colourful writing icing and let the children decorate them as maids, pipers, leaping lords and ladies dancing.
Let it snow
• Decorate your home in whites and silvers.
• Mix up a jug of ice cream fizz for those not drinking alcohol (lemonade with large scoops of vanilla ice cream in it).
• Serve drinks in glasses that have been in the fridge for a few hours so they are gorgeously frosty.
• Serve a baked Alaska pudding instead of Christmas cake.
• Get the kids to make ‘snowball’ sweeties out of ready-roll icing.
• Invite everyone to dress in white or with a ‘frosty’ theme.
• Play ‘the abominable snowman’ race – get into teams and give each side two toilet rolls with which to completely dress one of their team-mates as the abominable snowman.
Victorian Christmas
• Get everyone to dress in Victorian costume.
• Dress your Christmas tree when everyone has arrived so you can act out one of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s favourite festive traditions.
• Get everyone to buy one present to add to a large tub so each guest takes one gift at random. Presents have to be Victorian in style – a little wooden toy, a trinket, a DVD of ‘Oliver Twist!’
• Serve hearty old fashion British dishes like pies, roasts and don’t forget they ate curries in those days, too…
• Host a music hall karaoke. Dig out the lyrics to old favourites like ‘Champagne Charlie’ and ‘Where Did You Get That Hat?’
Savvy tip
Making biscuits in themed shapes is easy with our gingerbread men recipe.
Pass it on – more festive party ideas
Try these party games with a difference for gatherings with friends and family.