A progressive Christmas dinner is a great way to spread the joy of hosting a party amongst your friends and neighbors. Everybody gets to be a host and a guest all in the same night! Plus, it spreads the work around so no one person is stuck with all the decorating, cooking, and clean up. Progressive parties are great fun any time of the year, but are especially nice during the holidays because everybody’s house is all decked out in it’s holiday finest — show it off! Seriously, does your house have twinkle lights and glittery snowflakes any other time of year? Mine, either.
If you are not familiar with how a progressive dinner works, here are the basics. Each family pitches in, providing food and playing host for one of the dinner ‘courses’. For example, the 1st home would provide appetizers and cocktails, the 2nd home provides soup and salad, the 3rd handles the main course, the 4th house provides dessert and coffee, and the 5th house can offer fruit, cheese, and games or party favors.
It works well if everyone sets up their food and beverages buffet style. Get creative with your food displays. Use a pretty holiday table cloth or runner, or sparkly place mats and a few festive decorative touches along with your favorite holiday serving dishes, platters, and bowls and you are all set. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. Use what you have! If you are responsible for the coffee and dessert, maybe your display “centerpiece” could be an adorable Santa or Snowman cookie jar. Surround that with a few glass hurricanes or glass bowls filled with ornaments (or evergreen boughs with some pine cones and cranberries), some pretty colored napkins and maybe a candle or two and you’re done.
If you have younger kids in your neighborhood why not hire a few of the older teens to babysit the little ones while the grown ups move from house to house. Ideally, the last house on the dinner tour would be set up as the kid’s party spot so everybody can easily collect their kids at the end of the evening. Make it fun for them, too, with some kid friendly foods, games, crafts and some Christmas music for them to enjoy.
There really are no rules…if you don’t like the idea of having a full ‘dinner’ just have the first half of the houses do appetizers and the last half do desserts. The whole idea is to have fun with your neighbors without creating a lot of work for anybody. It’s cold in December where I live and I miss seeing my neighbors at barbeques and block parties during the winter months! This is a perfect way to reconnect during the holidays.
Lori is a content writer for Discount Party Supplies. Lori is married with 3 kids and hosts many family gatherings and parties. In her free time, Lori enjoys taking yoga classes and in her secret life she likes going to heavy metal concerts (but don’t tell the other soccer moms!).
