 This past Sunday evening, our High School Ministry gathered for our year end Christmas Party. We host our annual Christmas party on our last Sunday before going on Christmas break. It's relaxed, laid back, and fun! Our primary goal for the Christmas party is social and relational. We want our students to hang out with each other while our leaders mingle and build relationships with our students. I try to not over program our Christmas party. In our church, December is a busy month with various activities and programed events that keep folks jumping. Outside of the church families, students, and our staff are very busy with school, jobs, Christmas shopping, sports, and seasonal concerts. So to counteract the busyness of the season, I purposely leave our Christmas party as something that is as un-programed as possible.
3 Big Daddy pizzas. These large rectangular pizzas offer a larger quantity of slices than regular round pizzas. To keep everyone happy, we ordered one plain cheese, one pepperoni, and one sausage. Pizza, carbonated beverages and bottled water, along with chips and snacks, a cookie cake, and a few Christmas cookies, filled our table and the first 15 to 20 minutes of our time together. We set up round tables in our student space for the students to gather around while they ate and socialize. T-SHIRTS FOR YOUTH WORKERSAfter some pizza and drinks, it was time to get rolling with our party activities. Like I said, I don't program a lot of games or activities so for this years party I decided to use a downloadable resource from Download Youth Ministry. It was the perfect crowd breaker game to prime our students for the parties main event, The Great Gift Exchange!
your activity, purchase, download, then load it into your presentation software and you're ready to go! I've already downloaded and used four different games for the month of December, including Dollar Store Or So Much More? Christmas Edition, which we played as our ice breaker at the party. It was perfect! Be sure to check out tomorrows blog for a list of all the games we've played this month.
little surprised and amazed by the gifts that are opened and by what gifts become the hot items that are stolen over and over again. Bags of various candies are always a favorite. But the top gifts for our students include a grow-it yourself Bonsai Tree Kit, a box of Utz Chocolate Covered Pretzels, and a Christmas box full of candy. Some gifts are "stolen" multiple times leaving the final winner a mystery until the end of the game.It was a great night of relaxing fun, food, and friends. We laughed a lot. Got some great gifts. And we enjoyed time with our students. Now we're ready for a little break and some time with our families! What do you do at your ministry Christmas party? Share your activities and program ideas in the comment section below! - jay
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I wanted to do something special for our student meeting space for Christmas. We don't have a lot of space in our youth room for a large set up. But we do have an area that I set up as a make-shift stage. The area includes speakers, TV monitors for media, some simple lighting, and a table or music stand which I teach from.
We decided that we would decorate our youth room with an Elf theme. Students cut out snowflakes from white paper, constructed a huge paper chain, and set out to recreate the apartment and store scene. As the centerpiece, I thought it would look cool to have a couple triangular Christmas trees on our stage area.
Here's what you need for the styrofoam Christmas Trees...
I chose the colors red, green and blue because I already had colored lightbulbs in red, green and blue. The up lights I already had because it's what we use as part of our simple stage lighting. The colored bulbs help to accent the colored styrofoam.
We decided to wrap the larger, center tree with a string of Christmas lights. It was an idea of one of my students and I love how it came out.
Constructing the trees was super easy. Total, it took me about 6 hours to construct seven trees. Our students decorated the youth room for Christmas as another student and I set up the trees and all the wiring to create our stage area. Watch the video below to see how I created my styrofoam trees!
Watch The Video!
Thanks so much for check in for today's blog and DIY video! I hope that you have found the video to helpful and inspiring. I'd love to hear about your Christmas staging ideas and construction tips and tricks! Feel free to leave a comment below. If you have any questions about what I created, hit me up below.
- jay
It's been a couple of weeks, NYWC 2018...Thanksgiving...and some time planning. But the vlog is back and I can't wait to share with you! Be sure to check in daily all December long!
NYWC 2018 - Recap Blog Post NYWC 2018 Recap - Welcome Back (YouthSpecialties.com/blog)
 I had the opportunity to preach the Sunday after Thanksgiving (November 25, 2018). My scripture text was Philippians 3:1-11. Take a few minutes to give a listen!
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AuthorJay Higham is a veteran youth worker of over 28 years; having worked with students in the local church and Christian camping settings. Jay is currently serving as the director of family ministry at a church, located in West Virginia. Jay has been married to Amy for over 23 years. Together, they are raising 5 kids, (4 boys and 1 girl). Jay is an aspiring author, blogger, speaker, vlogger, and social media junkie. He is passionate about student ministry, family ministry, and training youth workers to love and serve their students with passion and excellence. 
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