First choose the right game!
Our best-selling mystery at this time of year is of course The Night before Christmas. This game, set in a high-class New England family’s hunting lodge, is for 12–15 guests and a host, and we also have 5 free extra characters that you can add in if you need more.
Of course, The Night before Christmas isn’t just for the 24th December – it works well at any time in the run-up to the big day. But if you’re organizing your party after Christmas itself, then you want Dazzled to Death instead! This is basically exactly the same game, but with the specific Christmas theming removed.
Or if you don’t have that many guests, check out Snow Business, our other winter-themed murder mystery – this one is for 10–12 guests, and it’s set in a ski chalet with another murderous family get-together.
We create new games from time to time, and we post Christmas games to our Christmas Murder Mystery Party Games page. So keep an eye on that!
Second, pick the right music!
You want something appropriately festive, but also suiting the period. The Night before Christmas is set in the 1950s, so Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, Judy Garland’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and other classics like Let it Snow!, Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Baby and Sleigh Ride are absolutely perfect.
Snow Business is set in the present day, but in a cheesy Alpine resort, so a selection of more modern Christmas songs would be great – Last Christmas, Do They Know It’s Christmas, All I Want for Christmas is You, Fairytale of New York – that sort of thing. With some Euro dance music mixed in!
Third, serve the right food and drink!
We always recommend our games are accompanied with finger food rather than a sit-down meal, and Christmas nibbles are ideal for this. Here’s a great list of simple but delicious recipes from the BBC.
As for drink, there’s the traditional punch (alcoholic or not), mulled wine, eggnog, and hot chocolate. Here’s a good mixture of those together with some festive cocktails, from the BBC again. And eatingwell.com has a great selection here of non-alcoholic drinks, for everyone to enjoy!
The other important tip is: get planning well in advance! We recommend starting two weeks beforehand, ideally. If you don’t have that long, that’s OK, but you’ll have to be organized: don’t leave it to the last minute before printing out the character booklets!
We at Freeform Games will be on duty throughout the holiday period, here to answer your enquries and help with any problems. But if you follow these tips, everything should go just fine and you and your guests will have a terrific and murderous Christmas party! Do please let us know how it goes…
My husband and I are thinking about getting a bunch of our college friends together for a murder mystery night instead of doing a traditional Christmas party. It makes a lot of sense that you say to choose fun Christmas music to set the theme for the party and to make sure that you prepare at least a few weeks in advance. This way my husband and I can choose food that also matches the theme and we won’t be stressed out the night before trying to set everything up.
Thanks Rosie, that sounds like great planning!
I ran lei’d to rest on 27th december. it was awesome to have all my friends in summer clothes, listening to hawaiian music and pretending like it was warm outside!
That’s great to hear, thanks! We hope no-one caught pneumonia 🙂