The festivity season is approaching, and it is a perfect opportunity to organise parties with your flatmates in the days before you return to your family.
It is a great way to feel the Christmas atmosphere even if you have moved to a new city. You can start to create your own traditions and strengthen your bond with roommates and friends.
If this is your first experience as an out-of-towner and you've never had the chance to organise dinners and evenings in a shared house , you'll find plenty of ideas for things to do with flatmates here. What's more, they are all low-budget options, perfect if you and your friends, like all students, are on a tight budget.
You'll see, you just need to surround yourself with the right people and have some original ideas to create magical and ultra-fun evenings.
1. Creative Workshop
The first thing to do to start feeling the Christmas spirit and create the right atmosphere is to decorate the flat. Moreover, this can already be the first opportunity for a weekend evening or afternoon to spend with your flatmates.
Go and buy a Christmas tree and everything you need to decorate it: balls, coloured ribbons, lights both for the fir tree and to put in one of the common rooms of the flat. You can also think about making do-it-yourself decorations. It is a fun way to spend time together, to unleash creativity and to give the house an even more personal touch.
A nice idea would be to create a noticeboard with your photos as a reminder of activities, parties, dinners, outings or other things you have done together. If you don't have any photos, buy a notice board anyway where you can stick a list of fun things to do between housemates (nice things to do...) and start creating your memories together.
2. Roomie dinner before Christmas
Among the evenings to be spent together, a nice festive themed dinner is certainly not to be missed.
To make it even more special, you can decide on a festive theme, such as 'Ugly Christmas Sweater' or 'Christmas Around the World'. Everyone can dress up according to the theme and share typical food or drinks from different festive traditions, this is especially good if your housemates come from different countries. This is a great way to get to know other people's traditions or customs and learn new things about how Christmas is celebrated in other parts of the world or country.
For dinner, you can also use the Potluck method: each roommate or invited friend brings a dish to share. You could assign categories such as starters, main dishes, side dishes and desserts to ensure variety. This way work and expenses will be shared, and everyone will feel part of the party organisation.
3. Surprise Gift Exchange
The gift exchange can be done during Christmas dinner or even by organising an ad hoc event. In fact, it would be a great opportunity to liven up an evening when you decide to get together for a chat or a drink.
How does it work? A budget is set and each guest to the evening must bring a gift that fits into that budget. On that evening, numbers are assigned to the gifts while other cards bearing the same numbers must be placed in a container. The game is to randomly draw a card and see which gift carries the corresponding number.
It becomes even more hilarious if everyone buys nice and funny presents, it is great to see the faces and reactions of others when they unwrap the package.
4. Film or TV Series Festive Evening
In the weeks leading up to the return of the family, you could even set up more than one date among housemates or university friends and have Christmas movie marathons. There are several ways to do this, e.g., re-watch the great classics, discover new releases, organise an animation movie night. In short, the options are many and all perfect for spending the evening at home in the warmth, drinking tea or chocolate, surrounded by the colourful lights of the decorations.
If you combine this with biscuits or a homemade cake that spreads the aroma around the rooms, you really do create the perfect scenario for this season.
5. Group Table Games
Another way to spend quality time with housemates is with board games. True, not everyone likes them, but with the right company, even the most reluctant will not fail to give in and get swept up in the game.
If your memories of board games stop at Monopoly and Risk, you should know that there are many others that are faster and super fun. For example, Pictionary or Taboo, Catan or Scotland Yard, Trivial Pursuit, Dixit and all the various card games. If you are looking for ideas on this, have a look at board games to play with your roommates.
Game night can also be a continuation of a nice dinner or an opportunity to get together again another time. If you combine games with penalties everything can become even more interesting.
6. Karaoke or Music Evening
Before organising this evening first talk to your neighbours to make sure you are not disturbing them. Once you get the OK you can consider a karaoke challenge between flatmates or a game where you have to guess the songs.
There are many ways to do this even if you don't have an actual karaoke machine. For example, you can start the songs with Spotify and activate the Lyrics function to read the words. The additional challenge could be to remove the lyrics at some point and see who knows the words even without reading.
You could also combine the music night with the choice of surprise gifts. Whoever wins the song challenge could choose their favourite package, draw the number first or have some other privilege.
7. Shopping and Christmas events
Roommate celebrations don't have to be indoors!
If you live in the city, there are certainly plenty of events and activities planned for the festive period. There are often Christmas villages with an ice-skating rink, winter games, markets with stalls and mulled wine.
Perfect occasions to breathe in the Christmas atmosphere, eat good food and find the last Christmas presents. In addition, the cities are filled with lights and decorations, and it is nice just to walk through the streets of the centre, looking at the shop windows and all the decorations.
Around 8 December in every city, the Christmas tree is also lit, a magical moment that draws all citizens to the main square to see the exact moment when the city fir tree comes to life.
8. Relaxation and Well-being
Let's end on a high note! After the hustle and bustle of parties, evenings and dinners, you could organise an evening of relaxation and final preparations. The time comes for everyone to pack their suitcases, choose which clothes to bring for the family holiday period, wrap the last presents and so on.
This can also be an opportunity to share and have fun with housemates. You could take turns packing your suitcases, choosing outfits and dispensing advice on combinations. A trick to make things more dynamic could be to challenge each other on who takes the least time to pack a present or finish the suitcase. You could use Christmas songs as a kind of stopwatch by stopping the song at the end of the activity. Or the song can be 'the distraction', e.g., sing the song while wrapping the gift.
The possibilities are endless, and you can have a lot of fun with very little. Remember to consider the interests and preferences of all housemates to ensure that every evening is fun for everyone!
