Best Holiday Team Building Activities Near Me: Find In-Person & Virtual Training

Learn More About Holiday Team Building Activities Courses

Is your company looking for fun team-building activities? Hosting holiday-themed group events will help your team get to know each other and improve their communication skills. You can choose from a wide variety of types of events and activities such as trivia, escape rooms, and craft activities. Most team-building activities center around Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but you can also find activities for New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, and general seasonal activities appropriate for the winter holiday season.

Holiday team-building activities provide a means to get to know each other. Craft-style activities offer the chance to socialize and gain hands-on experience creating something. Other activities, like trivia and escape rooms, emphasize working together. These activities are ideal for teams that need to strengthen their problem-solving, communication, and conflict resolution skills.

The holiday season is an ideal time to host or attend a holiday-themed team-building event. During the fall and winter holidays, it’s common for companies and organizations to hold holiday parties. You can have a team-building class hosted at your office or an office-like location for your team around the holidays or even overlap with a holiday party. Activities like baking, crafting, and trivia make for a great way to unwind and socialize while also working on important teamwork skills.

Why Host Holiday Team Building Activities?

Holiday-themed events and games as team-building activities are a great way to improve important aspects of employee teamwork. First, many of these activities help people improve their communication through open dialogue. As members work together to find answers to trivia questions, try puzzling out clues to get out of an escape room, or socialize while creating holiday cards, they’ll learn to work together and learn each other's strengths. For instance, in a holiday-themed trivia game, your team members must work together and find the correct answer as a team, especially when two members of one team provide different answers to the question.

This is also a great way to build trust between team members. They’ll get to know each other better in a fun setting by playing games, which can strengthen trust and build a friendly rapport between colleagues. They’ll also need to place trust in each other to win games that depend on team play. You can up the stakes of this team-building activity by including a modest prize for winning teams such as gift certificates or gift baskets. Although some of these activities will place teams in opposition to each other as they compete against each other, team-building activities will reduce conflict in the long run. Teams will develop the necessary skills to communicate and work together effectively, which will help reduce internal conflict in the workplace and create a more harmonious work environment.

You can tailor holiday-themed team-building activities to make them fun and appealing to your team members. Doing so will make team-building more enjoyable and less of an obligation for the sake of work. Games and challenges become more fun when they’re widely appreciated. Your team members may find holiday-themed team-building activities more enjoyable for some holidays than others, especially if they include holiday-themed food and refreshments. When you cater to their preferences in some ways, they’ll feel more comfortable working to communicate better and potentially break the ice with colleagues they’re unfamiliar with.

What Will You Do in a Holiday Team Building Activity?

The purpose of a holiday-themed team-building activity is to strengthen teamwork and entertain. The holiday aspect of these activities can help with the entertainment part; for example, Halloween makes a great time to try out an escape room while Christmas easily offers the chance to host a white elephant gift exchange. You can also serve holiday-themed snacks and drinks to make the activity more entertaining.

It’s best to consider what types of holiday-themed activities provide the opportunity for team building before booking an activity for your team. Escape rooms provide a fun and useful way to help your team learn how to work together in a variety of team dynamics. During an escape room, you’ll learn everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, including their problem-solving skills. Several team members may prove themselves to have the qualities expected of a leader, or you may see a team dynamic emerge where members switch between leading depending on the aspect of the escape room they’re trying to figure out.

Holiday-themed trivia games provide everyone with a good opportunity to socialize. Small and large teams can benefit from socializing in a context outside of the office. Themed trivia challenges, in particular, are a great way to find out everyone’s interests and bond over those that they have in common. You can play a few rounds of trivia and switch up the teams between rounds to give everyone the chance to work together.

How Long Do Holiday Team Building Activities Last?

You’ll likely find that holiday team-building activities themselves are easy to learn. Whether it’s an escape room, a round of trivia, or a craft activity, most are easy to pick up after a quick explanation of instructions.

If you decide to host a holiday-themed trivia activity, you should know that most of them follow the rules of classic trivia, where teams answer questions for points. The difficult part of trivia is, more often than not, the actual questions. The more often you play trivia, the easier you’ll find the rules and gameplay. Regular practice can help with recall and general knowledge. Difficult questions can stem from any subject covered during trivia. To practice, you can download trivia apps to expand your knowledge. Most people get the hang of trivia within one game, but it can take longer for them to become comfortable with the questions they’re being asked unless it covers a specialized interest of theirs.

Escape rooms shouldn’t be too easy or too difficult. The point of an escape room is to communicate, work on problem-solving, allocate roles to make the challenge easier, manage time, build trust and resolve conflict. It’s unlikely that your team will finish an escape room quickly on the first go-around. An escape room provides a great chance to develop a team dynamic and become familiar with the personality traits of others. This can help speed the activity along or even make it more challenging.

Other holiday-themed team-building activities, like crafts, may require you to follow step-by-step instructions. This hands-on learning may take some time but usually can be completed within a single session.

What Are the Advantages of Hosting a Holiday Team Building Activity?

If you’re looking to encourage team building among your employees or want to schedule a fun holiday team-building activity for you and your colleagues, there are events on CourseHorse that you can sign up for today. Signing up for holiday team-building classes offers the benefit of having everything set up for you. Instead of having to come up with the mechanics of the game or challenge you’re playing or buying the materials necessary for your event, someone else takes care of all that. You and your team can simply show up and get started. Most of the events offered through CourseHorse include a live professional host, so nobody on your team has to sit out the activity. The host will guide you through any necessary instructions and make sure your team progresses smoothly through the chosen activity.

Holiday-themed team-building activities simplify the hosting process, which can also make it easier to get people to attend. You can opt for an event hosted at your location, whether it’s an office or a rented space. Some classes offered by CourseHorse encourage hosting at a local bar or pub and others can take place fully online. Having decisions like location, materials, and the host decided on or supplied can make it easier for people to attend. Not having to worry about contributing, hosting, or making decisions about the event, which sometimes makes people more likely to commit to participating because all they need to do is show up and have fun.

Best Holiday Team Building Activities

CourseHorse provides a thorough listing of holiday team-building classes on its website. From here, you can check out a wide range of in-person holiday team-building classes available for booking. Don’t see a class hosted in your city? Explore the range of virtual classes hosted by CourseHorse that may appeal to you and your team. Each event page also clearly outlines the event’s price, participant capacity, and the company’s cancellation policy.

For a fun and filling activity, register your team for NYC: Pumpkin Bread & Apple Turnovers. Up to 30 people can attend this baking class held in Manhattan. During the two-and-half-hour session, you and your team will follow along as an expert pastry chef teaches you how to make perfect pumpkin bread and apple turnovers. You’ll learn not only how to work step-by-step through the recipes, but also how to select ingredients and achieve desired textures. This class provides a mouthwatering lesson in baking that you can also use to socialize and work with your team. The lessons will include all the necessary equipment and ingredients. Please plan to wear casual clothing that offers safety and comfort and can withstand potential messes involving flour, including closed-toe shoes. This course costs $792 for up to 8 people and $99 per additional person.

Consider making the trip over to Murray Hill after work and book the 90-minute NYC: Holiday Craft Cocktail Class. Plan to unwind as you and your team members learn to craft seasonal cocktails with expert mixologists. This class makes a great holiday celebration as you whip up drinks with your team while socializing and getting to know one another. The course focuses on cocktails tailored for the season, so expect to gain the skills necessary to serve up drinks at your next gathering, family reunion, or festive get-together. The course accommodates up to 30 people with a fee of $594 for up to six people and $99 per person thereafter.

Halloween enthusiasts can enjoy the spooky holiday in LA: Halloween Party—Trivia & Scavenger Hunt at their office or other preferred location. Expect an inclusive event packed full of team-building activities, like trivia, scavenger hunts, and wild-card challenges all centered around a Halloween theme. The one-hour event puts together small teams to compete in a variety of challenges to make you laugh, work together, and feel the competitive spirit. The facilitator of the event will walk you through a round of scavenger hunt, where you’ll work with your team to find Halloween-related objects, a round of trivia focused on candy, scary movies, and other Halloween-related facts, and a wild-card round, where you’ll compete to complete a secret challenge as quickly as possible. If the scavenger aspect of the event interests you and your team, CourseHorse offers several LA-based scavenger hunts, including ones at the Santa Monica Pier and in Culver City.

Gift-giving provides a way to learn about your team and their likes, dislikes, and their sense of humor. At a white elephant gift exchange, you typically purchase a relatively inexpensive and oftentimes impractical gift. Participants then take turns randomly selecting their present, but they have the option of unwrapping it or stealing someone else’s present. In Chicago, your organization can book a White Elephant Team Gift Experience (Standard). The booking fee is $750 for up to 10 people and $75 per person thereafter. The fee includes one gift shipped to each team member. CourseHorse has an extensive list of gifts available for the event. Upon booking, you’ll provide CourseHorse with the addresses of participants. CourseHorse also offers the option to book the premium version, which includes higher priced items, or a Send Your Own Gifts option. If you’re interested in booking, you can contact CourseHorse to find out what actual gifts they may include in the game.

In Houston, your team can book a 90-minute Wreath Making Workshop. A professional artist will lead up to 50 of you through the process of creating a custom wreath that you can display in your home or office for a bit of festive cheer. Participants will use seasonal objects provided to them to make their wreaths. Items include an assortment of greenery, pinecones, sprigs of pepper berries, wire for attaching elements, ribbon or bow, and twine for hanging the wreath. After booking the events, CourseHorse will ship items to the addresses of participants provided upon booking. If you don’t know your headcount but want to reserve a date, book with the minimum number of participants on the date you’d like the class to take place. You can finalize payment and headcount later.

Many of the holiday events offered by CourseHorse are available in several cities, including NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston. If you don’t see a class offered in your city, contact CourseHorse to see if they can accommodate your location.

Live Online Holiday Team Building Activities

With CourseHorse, you can book a virtual or live online holiday team-building activity. Teams with members who can’t commute to an in-person event, who are in a location where CourseHorse does not offer holiday events, or who work from home and find themselves spread out across the country, can choose the option of booking a virtual or live online holiday team-building activity.

You don’t need to meet in person to complete an escape room. Book Virtual Escape Room: Halloween Haunted House and experience an exhilarating online Halloween adventure. Your team will work on immersive puzzles, engage with clues, and complete mini-games, all while fostering teamwork and improving their communication skills during this experience. Mini teams will spend 75 minutes working to escape an online haunted mansion set in the Louisiana countryside. The escape room begins by setting the scene—one that places you and your team in peril—before presenting you with clues, puzzles, virtual maps, video clips, and character descriptions. Your team can use Zoom to join the escape room or contact CourseHorse about an alternative video conferencing platform such as Microsoft Teams or Google Meets. The minimum group size for the escape room is 15 people, with a maximum of 200. The cost is $400 for up to 15 people with a $15 per person fee thereafter.

Book Virtual Thanksgiving Cookie Decorating for a delicious and interactive team-building workshop. A live professional chef leads participants through the creation of sugar cookies into festive holiday ornaments. Before class, you and your team will receive cookie decorating materials, including 15 freshly baked sugar cookies, four bags of colored frosting, and four containers of sprinkles and jimmies. The instructor will help everyone go from sugar cookie basics to a well-decorated cookie that embodies the holiday. The class should run for about 75 minutes. The maximum group size is 250 people with a booking fee of $900 for up to 10 people and $90 per person thereafter.

CourseHorse offers both in-person and online white elephant events. In the virtual White Elephant Team Gift Exchange, you and your team members will use a white elephant game app to boost holiday spirit and strengthen team morale. Before getting to the gift-giving, everyone will partake in a single round of virtual holiday trivia which will decide the order of gift unwrapping. Then, you’ll use the game app to virtually “unwrap” gifts. Like a traditional game of white elephant, everyone will have the chance to steal a gift from someone else. Once the game has ended, each team member will walk away with a virtual gift that CourseHorse’s fulfillment team will mail to them. You have the option of enrolling in the standard version of the event, which costs $70 per person, or the premium version, which costs $150 per person. The premium version includes gifts set at a higher price point. Reach out to CourseHorse if you’d like to see the actual gifts that they include in the game ahead of time.

Do you have a lot of movie buffs in your office? Test out their knowledge of classic holiday films in Virtual Trivia: Classic Christmas Movies. For one hour, spend time laughing and bonding with colleagues over classic Christmas movies. Your host will guide you through four rounds of trivia: a traditional round, a music round, an image round, and a surprise round. You’ll work in mini-teams for half the event and as a whole group for the other half. The event takes place over Zoom, with breakout rooms used to separate teams so they can deliberate on their answer choices. CourseHorse can accommodate other video conferencing platforms such as Google Meets and WebEx as long as you provide the meeting details in advance. If you would like to alter the length of the event, contact CourseHorse to discuss modifying it for your group’s needs and goals.

Your employees can take their team building to the next level in Virtual Mini Game Showdown: Holiday Edition. This activity provides non-stop action as you compete in a series of mini-games: trivia, speed type racing, Feud Frenzy, and escape room puzzles. The mini-games encourage a combination of skill, strategy, and fun to win. Contact CourseHorse about customizations like combining games, requesting specific trivia questions or themed games, or adding something to an event that involves materials. You can also contact CourseHorse to schedule a 20-minute demo of the event for $25 before committing to booking.

Virtual Holiday Feud Frenzy offers a holiday twist to the game show Family Feud. A live facilitator will host the high-energy game as your team battles against each other in a game of quick thinking and on-the-spot creativity. Multiple teams will face off against each other in a series of three rounds centered around holiday-themed survey-style questions. Reach out to CourseHorse if you have any questions before, during, or after the event. For a $300 charge, you can customize the event to cater to your group’s needs.

Bond with your team in a virtual Holiday Card Workshop. You’ll spend 90 minutes creating stunning cards to send to your loved ones while socializing with team members. The class includes a live host who will provide step-by-step instructions for designing your own personalized watercolor cards. Materials shipped to participants beforehand include watercolor-ready cardstock, envelopes, watercolor paints, and brushes. The class encourages you to include little ones in the activity to help you create your cards.

Elizabeth Gleesing

Elizabeth Gleesing is a university instructor and content writer at Noble Desktop. She earned her PhD in English from Syracuse University in 2023 with research focusing on how documentaries incorporate digital and new media technologies. Her research into artificial intelligence, data analysis, and emerging technologies informs her content writing as she frequently works on articles related to careers in data science, data analytics, AI, and related software.Elizabeth also has over ten years of experience teaching undergraduates in universities and colleges in New York and Washington state and won the Syracuse University English department’s Elson Teaching Award in 2019. Her experience in instruction allows her to coherently explain difficult topics to a variety of audiences.

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Featured Classes from Noble Desktop

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CourseHorse Experiences NYC: White Elephant Team Gift Experience (Premium)

CourseHorse Experiences NYC: White Elephant Team Gift Experience (Standard)

TeamBuilding tiny campfire

Learn More About Holiday Team Building Activities Courses

Why Host Holiday Team Building Activities?

What Will You Do in a Holiday Team Building Activity?

How Long Do Holiday Team Building Activities Last?

What Are the Advantages of Hosting a Holiday Team Building Activity?

Best Holiday Team Building Activities

Live Online Holiday Team Building Activities

Holiday Team Building Activities
Corporate & Onsite Training

Holiday Team Building Activities Training Map & Top Locations

38 Courses Available Live Online

9 Courses Available in NYC

Top Certificate Programs

Top Courses

Top Certificate Programs

Top Certificate Programs

Top Courses

Top Certificate Programs

Top Courses

TeamBuilding Gingerbread Wars (In-Person)

Holiday Group Activities

TeamBuilding tiny campfire

Learn More About Holiday Team Building Activities Courses

Why Host Holiday Team Building Activities?

What Will You Do in a Holiday Team Building Activity?

How Long Do Holiday Team Building Activities Last?

What Are the Advantages of Hosting a Holiday Team Building Activity?

Best Holiday Team Building Activities

Live Online Holiday Team Building Activities

Holiday Team Building Activities Corporate & Onsite Training Noble Desktop

Holiday Team Building Activities Training Map & Top Locations

38 Courses Available Live Online

9 Courses Available in NYC

Holiday Team Building Activities
Corporate & Onsite Training