The festive season is closing in, and instead of the usual Secret Santa swap where most gifts are either mugs or chocolate boxes, you can try something new for your employees this year.
Whether your team is competing to find hidden clues around the office or tackling festive-themed challenges, a scavenger hunt will fire up bonding like no other. It’s enough to boost your team’s morale, encourage teamwork, and test their problem-solving skills—not to mention, it’s loads of fun!
Here are 20 Christmas scavenger hunt ideas that’ll create lasting holiday memories in your workplace:
1. cityHUNT Scavenger Hunt
If you don’t have enough time to arrange a scavenger hunt yourself, yet you want your team to have a memorable once-in-a-lifetime holiday, opt for a customized scavenger hunt at cityHUNT.
The service is dedicated to corporate team building, so they know how to make a memorable hunt for your team, and the best part is that arranging it is a hassle-free process.
First, you’ll have a discovery call with an adventure consultant to get a general idea of the services provided and how they can be customized to meet your team’s needs. Next, you’ll customize the scavenger hunt with an adventure producer and wrap up payment, and that’s it!
On the day of the hunt, you’ll have adventure guides at cityHUNT preparing everything for your team, including the logistics and any tools needed. Not only that, but you can also download cityHUNT’s mobile application and get real-time instructions and a leaderboard for the team’s scores.
It’s the ultimate Christmas scavenger hunt idea to keep the competition friendly yet fierce!
2. Office Ornament Quest
If you’re carrying out the scavenger hunt inside your office, it’s a nice opportunity to make it office-themed.
One way to do so is to buy or make office-themed ornaments and hide them around the office. You can then give a list of clues to the employees, with a clue sentence for each ornament’s hiding place. Whoever finds the most ornaments wins.
If you’re willing to walk the extra mile, you can make these ornaments yourself with the employees’ pictures. But then, you’ll have to give each employee a dedicated clue for their own ornament, and only the employees who manage to find their ornaments will get to hang them on the office’s tree!
3. Holiday Recipe Ingredients Hunt
This one is easy yet extremely fun and rewarding. All you have to do is create a list of common ingredients for holiday recipes such as cinnamon, gingerbread, nutmeg, and cranberry.
For the scavenger hunt, have the employees find these ingredients in the office’s kitchen or around the entire office. You’ll have fun seeing them opening their colleagues’ drawer to search for a cinnamon stick!
This is the easiest version of the activity—if you want to make it more challenging and rewarding, you can specify a recipe and only include the ingredients for it. Then, if all ingredients are found, you can reward your team by making or buying the recipe for them.
4. Holiday Movie Quotes Hunt
Movie enthusiasts will love this one!
Start by collecting a list of holiday movie quotes and print them out on small papers. Next, hide the quotes in random places around the office and have the employees race to find them. Prepare small prizes for the winners like chocolates or ornaments.
Employees must find the quotes and identify the movie for each one—only the employees who get the movies right get the rewards.
After the hunt ends, you can have the employees vote for the movie they want to see and create a fun movie night in the office.
5. Office Elf Scavenger Hunt
If you don’t have enough time to arrange for a complex scavenger hunt, buy a bunch of small elf figures or plush toys. Next, hide them around the office in random places and provide clues that lead the employees to find them. Employees who find the elf figures get to take them home.
You can also do it without clues if you want or if the office isn’t that big. It’ll make it even more challenging.
If you want to make the reward more meaningful, you can attach a small treat or a holiday-themed image to each elf figure for the participants to take home.
6. Secret Santa Gifts Hunt
Some workplaces carry out Secret Santa swaps every year, so if that’s the case, you don’t have to change the tradition for this year. You’ll only make it more interesting and fun!
As a bonus, the employees will be doing all the work for this one—you’ll only watch and go home with a gift if you decide to participate!
After assigning employees to get gifts for each other, whether through a mobile application or a good old shuffle, have them hide their gifts somewhere in the office and create clues for their assigned recipients.
Then, watch as they scramble to find their Secret Santa gifts based on the clues left behind.
7. Christmas Stocking Hunt
I personally love Christmas stockings, partially because they’re always filled with treats and mostly because they’re so within the festive theme.
You can arrange a Christmas stocking hunt by buying a bunch of small stockings and filling them with treats or small gifts. Then, place them hidden around different departments or common areas in your workplace.
You can specify a time limit for the employees to collect as many as they can, and they get to keep whatever they find. It’s a hassle-free hunt idea that’ll keep the festive mood alive during the holidays.
8. Christmas Decorations Quest
Now here’s a Christmas scavenger hunt idea that needs some work but is so much fun. You can go down to your local Christmas market and buy a bunch of holiday-themed decorations. I’m thinking mini Christmas tree, small candy canes, mistletoe, mini Santas, tiny stockings, etc.
Next, hide these items around the office and encourage the employees to hunt for them and photograph the items they find.
As a fun bonus, you can end up printing the photographs and using them to decorate the office’s Christmas tree.
9. Winter Wonderland Hunt
If you want to create a scavenger hunt without any effort, you can always fire up a winter wonderland hunt. Instead of shopping for Christmas decorations or stockings, you’ll specify a list of outdoor holiday decorations for participants to find.
You can include string lights, inflatable Santas, or even candy cane arches. Participants can find these decorations anywhere, whether in their neighborhoods, local markets, or a shopping mall.
For proof, they have to take photos of all the items they find, and the participant who finds the most items from the list wins and gets a small reward.
Now that’s a team activity that doesn’t need any effort on your part!
10. Park Ornament Hunt
You can take your team to the park for a change of scenery. If you know your way around your local park, it’ll be easy to arrange the ornament scavenger hunt.
You’ll get the ornaments, hide them inside the bushes and around the trees, and specify a time limit for your team to find the largest number of ornaments. After the hunt ends, you can use the ornaments to decorate the office’s tree with your team.
11. Holiday Lights Adventure
Here’s a scavenger hunt idea that can be done virtually: create a route through a neighborhood or park known for Christmas light displays.
Give the team a list of specific features they have to find in these lights, like a rooftop Santa or twinkle lights. Then, have them photograph the features they find and share them through the team’s online chat group.
The participant who finds the most light features from your list wins, and your team has a fun nice activity to keep doing throughout the holidays!
12. Candy Cane Hunt
This one is easy to arrange, and it’s outdoors so it provides a needed change of scenery at that time of the year.
Choose a large outdoor space, be it inside your workplace or at a local park, and scatter a lot of candy canes around, making sure to hide some of them well.
Give your team a time limit to gather as many candy canes as they can find, and you can put a twist on the hunt like assigning extra points for finding color variations of the canes.
13. Snowman Search
Here’s another scavenger hunt idea that your team can enjoy throughout the holidays without any preparations on your part: snowman search.
You’ll create a list of unique snowman features like colorful buttons, carrot noses, or plaid scarves. Your team then has to search for these features and photograph as many variations as possible.
After that, everyone can share their findings in the team’s online group chat and have a good laugh about it. If you want to make the hunt rewarding, you can assign a reward to the participant with the most findings.
14. Christmas Market Hunt
If there’s a local Christmas market where you live, it’s a brilliant opportunity for a creative scavenger hunt. All you have to do is assign a list of specific items for your team to find.
You can include easy Christmas-themed items like gingerbread cookies or red ornaments, and you can take the difficulty up a notch by including less common items, like Victorian carollers figurines or snow deer sculptures.
Every time a participant finds something, they have to take a photograph to document it, and the participant with the most findings wins. You can make the reward more meaningful by buying one of the found items.
The good thing about this hunt idea is that you can either arrange it virtually or gather the team at the market and have them search within a time limit.
15. Selfie Scavenger Hunt
For a selfie scavenger hunt, the participants must take selfies with certain holiday-themed objects or at specific locations. You can specify some selfie targets, like taking a selfie with a decorated street lamp or in front of a house with bright Christmas lights.
You can also specify taking a selfie while wearing a Santa hat or with a giant inflatable snowman. The participant with the most creative selfie wins.
16. Christmas Tree Topper Hunt
For an old-fashioned scavenger hunt, buy a bunch of tree toppers and hide them around the common areas in your workplace. If you want, you can also do this scavenger hunt outdoors in a nearby park or any designated area.
Have the team search for the tree toppers within a time limit, and whoever finds the most toppers wins. You can also award extra points for specific types of toppers like handmade or vintage ones, but you’ll have to make some extra effort hiding those!
17. Ugly Christmas Sweater Hunt
Christmas isn’t Christmas without at least one ugly sweater. For the hunt, the participants have to find people or mannequins wearing ugly Christmas sweaters and take photos with them.
To make the challenge harder, you can specify the themes of sweaters you want them to find, like light-up or animal-themed sweaters. On top of that, you can give out bonus points for participants who manage to convince strangers to pose in their Christmas sweaters.
18. Christmas Clue Walk
For a mind-puzzling challenge and a scavenger hunt that promotes teamwork, you can organize a hunt where each clue is a riddle that leads to another location.
Set the walk’s route through the office or a local park, so you know where to hide the clues. You can also line it with Christmas-themed treats and have a major prize waiting at the end for the participants who manage to decipher all the clues.
It may be a bit challenging to create clues for everything, but you can always get printables with ready-made clues.
Here are some of the nice clues I found:
- Clue to a park bench: “Rest your feet, take a break. A festive seat you need to take.”
- Clue to a Christmas tree: “Tall and green, with lights so bright. You’ll find me standing, a sparkling sight.”
- Clue to a snowman: “I have a carrot where my nose should go. Find my hat and you’ll be near. Your next clue is hidden quite close here!”
- Clue to a wreath: “A circle of joy hangs on the wall. With ribbons, pinecones, and standing tall. Look carefully where it’s round and green. Your next clue is where it can be seen.”
- Clue to a bridge: “Over water I do span. A perfect place for carolers to stand. Cross me to find what’s hidden so well. Your next clue is there, I won’t tell!”
19. Tree Farm Scavenger Hunt
What’s a better Christmas-themed activity than visiting a tree farm with your team?
If you want to get a Christmas tree for the office and have some fun with it, you can arrange for a scavenger hunt at your local tree farm. For that, you’ll have to specify a list of types of trees for your team to find.
For example, you can include the tallest tree, the shortest tree, the oldest tree, or a tree shaped like a perfect triangle. Or, you can get more specific and include the exact height of the tree they should find, like 7’2”.
The search-and-find experience will cultivate festive vibes among your team, and you’ll end up with a unique tree for your office, so it’s a win-win!
20. Carol Code Breaker
For a true Christmas-themed scavenger hunt, break down Christmas carol lyrics into clues and hide them at various locations.
The way this hunt goes, the participants have to gather the separate pieces of carol lyrics hidden in the office or outdoors—wherever you choose to do the hunt.
Once the participants find all the lyrics, they have to arrange them in the correct order to reveal the carol’s name, and there’s a reward at the end of the hunt.
To take the challenge up a notch, you can give out extra points to the participant who sings the carol correctly after solving the puzzle.
I’d suggest doing this hunt outdoors, maybe in a park or outdoor market. It’ll give you a chance to spread out the clues over a large area instead of limiting yourself to the office. You can attach the lyrics to lampposts, trees, or even park benches.
Final Words
All the Christmas scavenger hunts I listed can be customized to fit different groups sizes and locations. Depending on your team’s size, you can choose the most suitable hunt type and start arranging it to be done right in time for the holidays.
If you don’t want the hassle of arranging the hunt yourself, you can always opt for cityHUNT’s scavenger hunt, where you only have to customize with the adventure producer and take your team to enjoy the friendly competition.
