Progressive dinners are one of my favorite ways to throw a party. This is a way for everyone to get involved and not leave the party planning all up to one person. It’s also a way for people to open their homes for the holiday season and share a bit of their lives with friends and family.

What is a progressive dinner? It’s a chance for more than one person to play host and provide food for the party. For this party there is some traveling involved, which makes is so much fun. The party travels from house-to-house. One house provides the appetizers, one house provides the dinner and one house provides the dessert. Everyone travels to the first house and shares appetizers together. When you are finished with the appetizers, everyone loads up in their cars and heads over to the next house for the main course. After the main course is finished, it’s time to travel to the last house for dessert.

If you have a large number of people, then you can delegate the responsibilities a little more. For example, one person may not like to cook but she would love to open up her home. Someone else, who is not having everyone over to their home, could agree to bring the dessert. Everyone pitches in and just focuses on having a great time.

Progressive dinners can be fancy or casual. You can include the kids or leave them at the house with a babysitter. Another idea is to have a few people watch all of the kids at the last house that is serving the dessert, feed them dinner there and let the kids join in for the last course.

You could also have a progressive dinner at local restaurants in your town. This can be a lot of fun also and it involves no cleaning of the house or dishes. Use your imagination and just have a blast!