Tips for Celebrating A Christmas Party At Home
Is your house the designated venue for the Christmas Party? Here are several tips that make celebrating and managing a party more stress-free!
Usually, the home with the most space for parking and guests is the designated Christmas party venue. Sometimes, it’s our grandparents’ house: not only does it keep them from traveling far, but it also lets them see all their grandchildren gather under one roof. Although preparing the house and making it look more festive can be a little stressful, it doesn’t have to be with these tips.
Christmas Party Planning 101 for Families
1. Do: Keep the tablescaping simple with festive colors instead!
Filipinos, when they throw Christmas parties at home, always bring out all the beautiful silverware and special plates. But there’s a minor caveat: some of us are not sure if our household help will handle those flatwares properly, giving us miniature heart attacks whenever they handle them. Instead, replace the tablecloths and placemats with something more festive. They’re less breakable and easier to clean too!
2. Do: Keep your coffee, tea, and wine supplies fully stocked!
When Christmas dinner is heavy and rich in both flavor and fat, people often try to detox their systems with three drinks: coffee, tea, and wine. However since not everyone can drink coffee because caffeine causes palpitations, tea can do the same thing with lower caffeine content. Wine is more for during the meal and for adults. And if there’s not enough wine, Boozy can deliver our choice of drinks to our house.
3. Don’t: Put your breakable Christmas ornaments on low tables.
Over the years, some of us have collected ceramic houses to create a miniature Christmas town on tables. But if our party is going to have a lot of young kids, perhaps the Christmas town can make a debut another time. With the kids running around, screaming in delight while ripping open their gifts, they might accidentally break something!
Either keep it until they grow or maybe put it somewhere on the side with less foot traffic.
4. Do: Make your Christmas playlist!
With Spotify, families can easily download a playlist full of their favorite Christmas songs to make it festive at home. Younger generations with ARMY kids will definitely enjoy the BTS Christmas songs as they tear through the gifts. Although songs from the trinity of Christmas music (Mariah Carey, Jose Mari Chan, and Michael Bublé) are still welcome, mixing them up with new ones may add more flavor to the celebration.
5. Don’t: Worry about having a simple Christmas tree design.
Christmas parties aren’t a competition about who has the nicest Christmas tree and home design. Somehow and every time, we tell ourselves that we’re not going to pull out the tree yet, we do so and make it even more grand than last year! Although we want our kids to have a meaningful and beautiful Christmas, it doesn’t mean overdoing the Christmas decor.
After all, we’re going to be the ones to store it when the holiday ends!
6. Do: Make sure the house has tissue, and alcohol in every corner of the house.
With COVID-19 Omicron showing up again, some cities have ordered their citizens to don their facemasks again. Others have already declared that Christmas parties are the culprits for the sudden outbreak! But this isn’t something we haven’t done before. Keep calm and just make sure each table or corner of our home has hand sanitizer and tissue nearby to maintain clean surfaces and areas.
7. Do: Locate the nearest church.
Filipino families attend Simbang Gabi — a specific mass meant for Christmas. Churches are not exclusive and welcome people from all sorts of places to attend Christmas mass. However, some Simbang Gabi masses are held in covered courts if the chapel doesn’t have enough seats or space. Just check out the trusty barangay bulletin board or church board for the schedules of where it’ll be!
8. Do: Schedule a general cleaning before and after.
It’s not only the Christmas parties that drain us but the cleaning after too! What we can do is handle the dishes and maybe put away the tables but, the rest of the nitty gritty cleaning can be dealt with by a cleaning service. Some agencies and offices have stay-out cleaners who clean houses when we moms are too tired to get up from the late-night Christmas party.
Keeping Christmas party planning and celebrating stress-free!
The joy of Christmas parties at home usually has the shadow of dreading the cleaning process looming over it. But the important part about managing one at home is to know what things are necessary and what things are just there to get bragging rights. Home Christmas parties are meant more for the memories and time with family, not for the decor.
More about Christmas parties?
Outfits You Can Wear To A Christmas Reunion
Add These Christmas Songs To Your Playlist For More Variety
6 Christmas Movies You Can Watch Besides Home Alone
