7 brilliant tips to throw the best Christmas party ever

Set the mood with colourful, festive decoration. Red, white and green is traditionally associated with Christmas, but let your creativity flow this year with more imaginative colour palettes. It helps to set a theme – perhaps you want to turn your home into a winter wonderland, then icy blues, white and silver will do the trick. Or lean into a tropical Christmas and deck your halls with vibrant colours, lush foliage and touches of blue to suggest the sea. Your party, your rules. 

After being cooped up so much (no thanks to the pandemic), everyone is just dying for an excuse to dress up and look pretty. Suggest a dress code for your guests so they have something to work with. Go for something classic (all white formal, glitter), or zany (Santa Claus chic, cabin-in-the-woods) and watch your guests go all out. You could even hold a little competition and award the best-dressed guest to spice things up!

There's nothing like a bout of coronavirus to ruin a good Christmas party. To keep the guests feeling safe and assured at your gathering, ditch the finger food and serve everything on individual plates. If you don't want to use disposables, you can even label a set of cutlery for every guest and encourage them to hold on to it through the whole party. If you're serving food family-style at one big dining table, be sure to provide serving spoons too. And if you want to keep the cooking to a minimum, here are some awesome Christmas takeaway ideas. 

A lively party needs good tunes. Let your guests in on the fun by creating a collaborative playlist on your favourite streaming platform. Spotify Group Sessions allows up to five users to play, pause, skip and queue music at any one time –so you can keep your party playlist fresh through the night. But it's also no big deal to crowdsource some song suggestions beforehand and preparing the playlist for the party. Whatever it is, don't forget to include these great festive tunes. 

You can turn virtually any game into a Christmas game – there's pass the party, Santa Says, even bingo. This year, inject some local flavour into your party – Chope! will have your friends yelling, scrambling and knocking things over, while Kopi King will have you rivalling your coffeeshop uncle in kopi knowledge. Need more board and card game ideas? Read our round-up of the best of the best. 

Nothing like a glass of sparkling wine to start off a Christmas party, but once that's done with, it's time to try something new. Mix up your own Christmas tipples – we've got tips here from Maker's Mark – or wade into the world of natural and biodynamic wines with Drunken Farmer. Keen to go alcohol-free this festive season? We've got the best places to pick up alcohol-free spirits and zero-proof drinks in Singapore. You won't even taste the difference. 

What's Christmas without a Yule log? Disappointing. So don't forget to get a Christmas cake for your party. There's no need to splurge either – there are plenty of affordable options at places like Don Don Donki (the MONTEUR Christmas Chestnut Log Cake is only $21.90). But if it's in your budget, consider these gorgeous and delicious options from around Singapore. That White Enchantment Log Cake ($88) from Goodwood Park Hotel, for example, looks like a dream.