Friendsmas: A December Group House Weekend Before Everyone Scatters for Christmas

Christmas Day itself is almost never a friend group’s day — it belongs to parents, in-laws, small children and whichever side of the family is hosting this year. Which is exactly why “Friendsmas” has become such a fixture on the December calendar: a proper weekend together as a group, deliberately booked before everyone disperses to their separate family Christmases, rather than a rushed dinner squeezed in between office parties. It is one of the few group occasions that does not compete with anything else already claiming the date — nobody’s family expects them home in early December.

Why early-to-mid December, not Christmas week itself

Christmas week and New Year’s Eve are both peak demand, with prices and availability to match. The first three weeks of December sit in a genuine value dip by comparison — Savills’ research on UK holiday accommodation put average self-catering occupancy at around 42% in 2024, a reminder that plenty of properties sit unbooked even in a busy season, and early-to-mid December is one of the calmer stretches within it. A Friendsmas weekend gets most of the festive atmosphere — log fires, mulled wine, a big dinner — without the Christmas-week price tag or the scramble for dates that the 20th to 27th brings.

Picking a weekend that doesn’t clash with everything else

The first two weekends of December are prime territory for office Christmas parties, which can make it genuinely hard to get a full group free on the same dates. It is worth polling the group early — well before you start looking at houses — and treating the first week of December, or a weekend deliberately a little earlier than everyone else’s office do, as your best chance of a clean diary. Booking early matters here for a reason that has nothing to do with property availability: it is your group’s diaries you are racing, not just the house’s.

Building a Friendsmas dinner that isn’t just Christmas Day again

Resist the urge to replicate a full Christmas Day dinner — turkey, all the trimmings, the works — a fortnight before everyone cooks it again at home. A private chef booked for a relaxed festive menu that borrows the best bits (a proper roast, good puddings, decent wine) without trying to be a carbon copy of the 25th tends to land better, and it means nobody in the group is stuck at the stove on their one weekend off. Keep it simpler than the real thing and the group actually gets to enjoy it together, rather than one person disappearing into the kitchen for the whole afternoon.

Gifts, without the admin

A full round of individual presents for a group of twelve or more gets expensive and repetitive fast — Secret Santa with a sensible spending cap, agreed and organised in the group chat well before the weekend, is the standard fix, and it is worth nominating one person to run it rather than leaving the draw to chance on the night. Keep the reveal itself simple: after dinner, by the fire, is a better setting than trying to fit it in before everyone has had a drink.

Decorations: worth doing, worth keeping simple

You do not need to fully dress a house for one weekend the way you would your own home for the full festive month — a few strings of lights, a wreath on the door and candles down the dining table do most of the work. Ask the owner what is already in place; many properties dressed for the season by early December will have decorations up that your group can simply enjoy rather than bring their own. Our guide to booking Christmas group accommodation covers the wider festive booking picture if your group is weighing up Friendsmas against Christmas week itself, or even the full Christmas and New Year period.

My honest tip

Book it before anyone’s diary fills with office parties, not after. The groups who leave Friendsmas until late November usually end up choosing between a smaller group and a worse house — the good properties for an early-December weekend go almost as fast as the ones for Christmas week itself, just to a slightly less obvious crowd of people booking early. And keep the dinner simpler than Christmas Day proper; the point of Friendsmas is that nobody has to cook like it is the real thing.