7 Ways To Celebrate Christmas Next Month

Tis the season! Christmas is almost here. Like many, you are counting down the days until Christmas this year. You are either arguing for Christmas music year-round, or you’re putting your foot down and holding off until Thanksgiving is over. Either way, you can’t avoid Christmas.

Christmas in youth ministry is a special season. It only comes around once a year and is such an important season in our churches. As a youth worker, you get to help your students remember Christmas in a new, fun, and special way this year. But, by this point in the year, you might be all out of ideas. Your mind is fried from everything this past semester, and you’re already looking ahead to the next year. So, here are seven ideas that you can adapt to use in your ministry.

Game Night

There are literally TONS of options here. With a quick Google search of “Christmas Party Games,” you can look up games for days and days. Pick 4 to 5 games that you can use on a Christmas night, and let that be a big element of fun for your night. Some of your games can be crowd games, stage games, individual games, or small group games. From candy canes, plastic wrap, minute-to-win-it, and even wrapping other students with wrapping paper, a Christmas game night can bring a ton of themed fun to help you celebrate Christmas with your students.

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Movie Night

Consider a Christmas movie night if you’re feeling like you’re just totally out of ideas. Get parent permission, check out streaming licenses, buy some popcorn and snacks, and hit play. You can do this in your youth room or even move it to a church member’s house (that probably has a nicer AV setup than your youth room) and have a ton of fun. Christmas movie nights allow a fun and relaxed night for students to gather and build community with each other.

Christmas Night of Worship

If you want to really dig in deep, plan a Christmas night of worship. A night of singing, Scripture reading, and praising the Lord for sending Jesus to earth. This is a night where you could have students up reading the Christmas story. One of my favorite passages to read at Christmas is Colossians 1:15-20. A Christmas night of worship can truly help prepare your students' minds and hearts to anticipate the Christmas season and why it really matters.

Serving Experience

The Christmas season is a great reminder to serve others. As you think about Jesus coming to earth to serve mankind, we can model His example and serve others. Plan an actual outing to go out and serve in your community, or plan something tangible at your church. You could use your programming time for students to write letters to shut-ins, you could do a food drive for a few weeks leading up to this night and make food boxes to distribute, or you could do something like Operation Christmas Child and collect money leading up to the night and then recruit some leaders and go shopping so students can start building their gift boxes.

Christmas Dinner

This could be a fun night for you to plan where you and your students gather to hang out and eat a fun meal together. You can theme the meal to make it more fun. One option would be to cater something nice, or you could recruit adult small groups to help provide specific menu options. Load them up with fun Christmas desserts and have a fun night eating together, playing some games, and building community. You could theme this night with a specific dress if you wanted to make it more fancy!

Cookie Decorating

This one would be a ton of fun but require a little prep work on the front end (depending on the number of students you have). This would also pair well with a game night or a movie night as an extra option. Have families in your ministry make a BUNCH of big sugar cookies in all different kinds of Christmas shapes (trees, stars, snowmen, or just plain circles). You provide the icing, sprinkles, and decorations and let students make their own cookies that they can take home and enjoy!

Christmas Dodgeball

Have a fun dodgeball tournament playing dodgeball. Have one team dress up as a theme and have the other team be another theme. This can be a fun way to burn off steam, have some prizes for the winning team, and build into the community. For dodgeballs, you could get white balls to look like snowballs.

By no means is this an exhaustive list to celebrate Christmas in your ministry this year. There are so many ways to make this season have an extra dose of “special” as you lead out in your ministry. Don’t forget some of the classic ideas that you can incorporate for any of these events: hot chocolate bar, tacky sweater competition, Christmas-themed photo booth (this is great for memories), white elephant gift exchange, or dress up as your favorite Christmas movie character.

Have fun this Christmas season, and if nobody has told you yet, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 Share your thoughts with others in our YM360 community:

• What would it look like if you brought some students and leaders together to prepare your Christmas plans for this year?
• What are other fun and creative ways to incorporate celebrating Christmas into your ministry this year?

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