The Journal · The Brantford Club

Christmas Party Themes for Work, and the Games That Suit Each Room

Office Christmas party themes that work cost the guests almost nothing: an ugly-sweater night, black and gold, a Victorian Christmas, a murder mystery dinner, a winter-lodge games night or a 1970s party. Choose the one your room can carry. At The Brantford Club, the pub holds 80 standing and the Main Floor Dining Room seats up to 60.

A Christmas party theme is a single idea, written in one line on the invitation, that tells guests what to wear, what will happen and how the evening will move. At a work party it has a second job: it hands colleagues who rarely speak to each other something to talk about in the first ten minutes. The Brantford Club has kept its rooms at 98 George Street since 1898, in an Italianate house from around 1855 at the corner of George and Nelson Streets, and this entry sorts the usual themes and games by the party size each one suits and the room it needs to work.

What makes a good Christmas party theme for work?

A good Christmas party theme for work passes four tests before anyone thinks about decorations. The theme should cost a guest nothing they would not already own, because a party that requires a costume purchase quietly taxes the junior staff. It should hold up for the colleague who does not drink, so a theme built on a cocktail list fails it. It should work for someone who would sooner sit and talk than play. And it should suit the room you have booked, because a theme fights the room it lands in more often than it changes it.

Twelve Christmas party themes for work, matched to a room

These twelve Christmas party themes survive an office because each asks little of the guests and has a game or a menu to carry it. The party sizes are guides, and the last column describes the space so the table works anywhere.

Themes for a seated dinner of up to sixty

A seated Christmas dinner for a work party of thirty to sixty suits the themes that live at the table. At The Brantford Club that means the Main Floor Dining Room, which seats up to 60 by the Club’s own hosting sheet and has a portable projector and screen for anything that needs a picture.

Black and gold is the safest dress-up theme an office can choose, because nearly everyone owns dark clothes and the gold can be a tie, a pin or a pair of earrings. It needs candles and a long table, and no props. A Victorian Christmas fits a house that was already standing about a dozen years before Confederation; it needs carols, a roast and perhaps one short passage of Dickens read aloud by whoever enjoys that sort of thing.

A murder mystery dinner gives every guest a script, which is a gift to the shy: the card tells them what to say. Most kits are written for a single table of players, so a larger group splits into tables that each solve the same crime. The Club’s own calendar has run one of these for its members, a murder mystery dinner called Murder on the High Seas. The plot advances between courses, so the kitchen and the story keep the same pace.

Christmas around the world puts the theme on the plate. Each course borrows from a different country’s table, and a card at each setting says where the dish comes from.

Themes for a standing party in the pub

A standing Christmas party suits the themes that are about mingling, and the room for that at 98 George Street is the pub, also called the Members’ Lounge: 50 seated or 80 standing, with two fireplaces and a horseshoe bar, booked for private parties outside the Club’s business hours.

The ugly-sweater night belongs here. Keep the sweater optional and the prize modest, judged by applause; a knitted or inherited sweater starts more conversations than one that lights up. A winter-lodge games night is the quieter cousin: flannel optional, card tables by the fireplaces, crokinole or euchre for the people who grew up with them. The Club has run its own version for members, a cottage game night of cards and board games, so the house knows the shape of it.

A 1970s Christmas has an unusual advantage in this building. The Retro Lounge upstairs is described on the Club’s hosting sheet as a 1970s room, so a decade party has a set already built, with the pub below for the crowd.

Christmas party games for work, and how each one runs

Christmas party games for work should be playable sober by people who have never met, and each of the games below meets that bar. Run no more than two in an evening; a party with five scheduled games feels like a training day.

Team trivia

Seat people in teams of five or six that mix departments on purpose, then run four short rounds: Christmas films, carols, the year in the company and the year in the news. A screen helps, and a host with a microphone helps more.

White elephant gift swap

Merriam-Webster defines a white elephant as an object no longer of value to its owner but of value to others, and records the story that the kings of Siam gave the sacred animals to courtiers they wished to ruin. The office version is kinder. Everyone brings one wrapped gift under a set amount, players draw numbers, and each in turn opens a gift or takes one already opened. Cap each gift at two steals and the round ends before anyone sulks.

Secret Santa

Draw names a month ahead, put one spending limit in writing, and open the gifts at the table during dessert.

Find-a-colleague bingo

Each card holds twenty-five squares such as “has worked here longer than ten years” or “has never seen the film everyone quotes.” Guests fill squares by finding a colleague who fits and writing in that name. It is the best opening game for a standing party, because the game itself is the introduction.

Name the year

Collect photographs from the company’s own past, with permission from anyone pictured, and show them one at a time. Teams guess the year.

Gingerbread build-off

Teams of four get the same kit, forty-five minutes and one rule: the house must stand on its own when time is called. The most senior person present judges, out loud.

Games to leave off the list

An office party is a work event to everyone who has to come back on Monday. Leave out drinking games of every kind, and any game with a forfeit that involves a drink. Leave out games that ask for confessions, such as rounds of “never have I ever,” and games that rank people on looks. Mistletoe gags and anything requiring physical contact go too. Costume themes that borrow another culture or another faith as dress-up do more harm than the laugh is worth, and a roast of a junior colleague is a roast nobody asked for.

The twelve days of Christmas at work

The twelve days of Christmas, by the church calendar, run from December 25 to January 6, and Britannica records that the evening before Epiphany, January 5, is called Twelfth Night. Most staff are on holiday through them, so workplaces borrow the idea and count down the last twelve working days before the break. Each day gets one small thing, such as a shared breakfast, a carol request or a donation box that fills by the day, with the Secret Santa exchange on the last afternoon.

The calendar suggests a better idea for the party itself. A Twelfth Night party in the first week of January is a theme with a long history, and it solves the hardest problem of December planning, which is that every room and every guest is already booked. The decorations are still up, the team arrives rested, and nobody is choosing between three parties on one Friday.

Bringing a theme into a private room at 98 George Street

A theme brought into a private room at The Brantford Club has two terms to plan around. Decorations must stand on their own, so plan a theme that lives on the tables and in the guests’ clothes, with nothing fixed to the walls. All food and drink come through the Club’s own kitchen and bar, with one exception that matters at Christmas: a celebration cake or cookies may come in, with a plating fee. The remaining terms are set out where the Club lays out how a booking works.

A company with nobody on the Club’s roll can still take one of these rooms for its Christmas party. A theme menu such as Christmas around the world is a conversation to have with Chef Eric Wasylenky’s kitchen when the room is booked; the Club’s Churchill Pork Chops appear on the seasonal menu the chef publishes. For a black-and-gold invitation, the Journal’s guide to smart casual sets the floor. Choosing the date, shaping the room and protecting the speeches are covered in our entry on planning the work Christmas party.

Office Christmas party questions, from themes to games

Sources, read October 2026: Merriam-Webster’s entry for white elephant; Health Canada’s Common food allergens page; Encyclopædia Britannica on Epiphany for the twelve days and Twelfth Night. For the Club: its hosting sheet (September 2026) for rooms and terms, its member-calendar posters, and the City of Brantford Heritage Register Project document for the house and its opening on December 31, 1898.