9 Creative Christmas Fair Ideas to Host Your First Christmas Fair

If you need to raise money, waiting for the holiday spirit to kick in isn’t your worst idea. Every year, 31% of giving happens during the month of December. This makes it a prime time for throwing a Christmas fair!

But what to do?!

If you need some help making your fair fun and lucrative, you’ve come to the right place. Just take a look at these 9 creative Christmas fair ideas.

1. Christmas and Crafts Flea Market

Instead of making all the arrangements yourself, have a Christmas and Crafts Fleamarket. Each vendor is responsible for their own booth. Now you only have to worry about the venue itself and any other events or games you want to host.

Speak to local artists about selling their crafts at your flea market. Invite amateur chefs to bake festive cakes, build gingerbread houses and make other holiday treats. Rent out parking lot space to your area’s favorite Christmas Tree salesman.

When you use your neighbors as your talent pool, you’ll always have a unique event. Everyone will want to join in on the fun.

2. Winter Wonderland Treasure Hunt

For this to work well you need your vendors to be in on the fun.

Make a page full of scavenger hunt clues and hand them out to kids. Each clue leads to a different booth or event at your fair. Make sure each vendor has a unique stamp and some ink and knows which clues are for their booths.

If your fair has a candy booth, a good example of a clue might be, “Get a treat for your sweet at this chocolate-covered location.” Any child that fills up their sheet with the correct stamps wins a prize.

To make things up have a few sheets with different clues so not everyone is on the same hunt. For younger kids, you can have a sheet of drawn clues instead of written ones.

3. Fun Christmas Themed Sweets

Get a variety of candy and give them silly Christmas themed names.

Chocolate chips become Penguin Poop. Goobers turn into Reindeer Droppings. Mints are Grinch Burgers.

Buy some treat bags (or make your own) and fill them with candies. Seal the bags and label them with their new Christmas names. Everyone will love your cute take on their favorite goodies.

4. Gingerbread Man Dress Up

Get some pre-baked gingerbread man cookies and some edible decorations. Kids and adults alike will love dressing up and eating their own gingerbread men.

5. Santa’s Souped-Up Sleigh Races

Get some remote-controlled cars and decorate them so they have a Christmas theme. Cordon off a section of your fair and make a small race track.

You can charge to let people race against one another on your course. The winner gets a prize. Alternatively, you could set up a challenge course. The goal is to make it through without hitting any barriers.

6. Stocking Stuffer Sleuths

Decorate and hang some stockings. Put some staple stuffers in the stockings and seal up the tops so no one can see inside. Hang them.

People pay a dollar to guess what’s inside. If they want a clue first, they can pay two dollars to feel the stockings before they guess. Anyone who names the stocking’s contents gets to keep what’s inside.

7. Decorate the Tree

Get a large Christmas tree. Go ahead and trim it with garlands and lights, but don’t hang any other ornaments. Instead, have a nearby stall with a variety of Christmas themed craft items.

Kids can pay to make their own ornaments and hang them on the tree. Make sure you get their mailing address before they hang it up. At the end of the fair, ship each child their Christmas ornament.

Now you have a new customer for your mailing list and the parents have a priceless keepsake. Everybody wins.

8. Santa’s World Tour

Get some zoomed-in pictures of various famous landmarks from across the world and hang them on the wall. Get a Flat Santa doll or some sort of token and hide it behind one of the pictures. This is where Santa currently is on his world tour.

Guests can guess where Santa is as long as they know the location in the picture. If they guess correctly, they win a prize.

Don’t forget to move Santa around from time to time. That man loves to move.

9. I’ve Got a Golden Ticket!

Make some festive muffins or cupcakes and bake a foil ticket into one of them. Sell the treats for three or four dollars each. Anyone who gets the golden ticket wins a prize.

Tips for Setup

Putting together something this big is a daunting task no matter what time of year. Doing it at Christmas is especially rough. Here are some tips to get you through.

You can read more about organizing events to raise money fair in this article.

Don’t Do It Alone

If you try to organize an event like this on your own, you’re going to do little more than stress yourself out. Get a small team of trusted people together and get them to help you set everything up.

You’ll have more fun working with others than if you try to solo it. Plus being able to delegate will take a lot of the weight off your shoulders.

Set Realistic Goals

Write down some actionable, realistic goals you want to achieve by the end of the event:

• Raise $500 for my cause
• Have at least 10 vendors attend the event
• Get 200 customers through the door

These are reasonable goals you should be able to achieve fairly easily. Don’t set your sights too high or it may feel like you failed even though everything went off without a hitch.

You Need Less Than You Think

Sit down and make a list of mission-critical tasks. Only include things that would stop the event from happening if you didn’t do them. Now do the same thing with your event shopping list.

Don’t include things like decorations. The show can still go on without decorations.

Whatever is on this list are the things you do first. Everything else is extra. You’ll be surprised at how little you need to get your fair up and running.

The Perfect Place for Your Christmas Fair Ideas

Now that you have some fun Christmas fair ideas, it’s time to start thinking about your venue. Location can make or break a fundraising fair, so finding the perfect place for your event is key.

Might we suggest The Midlothian Conference Center?

The center has several floor layouts to suit your needs. We can provide cozy environments for small handfuls of people in our Wildflower rooms or accommodate as many as 600 guests in our Blue Bonnet Ballroom.

Contact us now to book your event today!