Folks with distributed/remote teams: How are you handling holiday parties?

First... A broadcast communication from the Top Management and then a Greeting Christmas 🎄 meeting with all... without looking at those with different timezone.😐

We held a virtual meeting where folks were encouraged to wear an ugly Christmas sweater and share their local/country specific holiday traditions. 

We've done virtual gatherings for holidays the last couple of years and try to make them as engaging as possible through things like online trivia (kahoot), fitness classes, DIY cocktails/apps with a chef. In order to build some more excitement into it, we send out gift boxes ahead of time with supplies, treats, teasers, etc. 

For me only 2 things worked so far:
1. having online gatherings with a few fun games for the remote team and sending them a small surprise pack (sometimes it is part of the Xmas game)
2. I always make sure that they are invited to the local holiday gathering/party on top of the online team-up

The reason why I do the 2nd is that I was more than once part of a remote team which didn't get locally invited and we didn't have online team-up either, so we felt really neglected after all the hard work delivered during the year.

I also make sure that if an external resource is with us for the majority of the year and they are still there at the time of the holiday gatherings, then they get an invite (many times they are forgot).