Everybody knows that parties are for fun and celebration. Winter holiday parties are definitely different than everyday festivities. More often than not, even with detailed plans and extra help, these holiday celebrations can be stressful and exhausting. Almost all celebrations start by making a list and then inviting your chosen guests who will be asked to respond yes or no to your invitation.
Clustering with friends can lead to excessive drinking, and with that comes danger to your health and safety. Staying with your pals or people you work closely with also means you won't broaden your circle of colleagues and that you just might miss an opportunity to get to know someone who could influence your career. Hanging out with people you know often leads to banter about how terrible the party is and how much you dislike these holiday events.
We've done the hard, yet frequently delicious, work for you and ranked a handful of the holiday items available in 2025. We don't recommend the eggnog or the oat-based eggnog, but a few of our favorite items are included in the list below. In addition to considering our own experiences tasting these products, we also consulted online customer chit-chat. We based prices on what we found listed online for our local store.
"If you're meeting at a restaurant and the [reservation] is at 8pm, you have to be there five minutes before that, but if the party is in someone's home, I think you should be fashionably 10 minutes late," says etiquette consultant Patricia Maybury (theetiquettesuite.ie). Any earlier, and your host may still be frantically finishing their make-up or chopping up lemon slices.
The best white elephant parties I've ever attended are ones where people are often clamoring and trying to steal the hot gift of the night from one another - whether it's something super funny, genuinely good, or just downright practical that they actually need. Looking for white elephant gift ideas for an upcoming party? Below, I rounded up the best items that Apartment Therapy staffers recommend bringing to a gift exchange.