Virtual Holiday Party Toast: What to Say on a Video Call

The short version: a toast on a video call should run under a minute. Tell people what to raise before you start (coffee counts), pick one moment from the calls and chats you actually share, decide ahead of time whether everyone unmutes for "cheers," and stop before the silence gets heavy. Six short toasts are below, for a manager, a coworker, a founder, a hybrid party, a team on three continents, and a new hire who has never met anyone in person.

A toast in a room works because the room helps you. People laugh, glasses clink, someone at the back says "hear, hear." On a video call you get none of that. You are talking into a camera, looking at a grid of faces that may or may not be listening, and the only sound coming back is somebody's furnace kicking on. That's not a reason to skip the toast. It's a reason to shape it differently.

If you're the boss giving the main thank-you, the holiday party speech for employees guide covers what to say to the whole company. This one is about what changes on camera.

What changes on camera

• The lag. There's a small delay between you and everyone else. If you pause for a laugh, you'll hear it a beat late, or not at all because people are muted. Don't wait for laughs. Keep going, and let them catch up.
• Nobody can clink. The physical cue that ends a toast in a room doesn't exist here. You have to make the ending obvious with your words and a raised glass held up to the camera for a second or two.
• Gallery view hides the room. You can't see who's paying attention, and they can't see each other react. Talk to the camera lens, not to the grid. It's the only way anyone feels looked at.
• Time zones. One person is having a glass of wine after dinner, another has a coffee at nine in the morning, and someone else is eating lunch at their desk. Your toast has to work for all of them.
• Muted laughter. Your best line may land well and you'll never know. That's fine. A quiet video call is not a sign the toast failed.
• The chat is the room. On a call, people react by typing. Glance at it once when you finish. If the chat fills with glasses and hearts, that's your applause.

Tell people what to raise

Before you say anything else, tell people to grab whatever is next to them. On a video call most people are sitting at a desk, and plenty of them weren't planning to drink anything. Say it plainly: coffee, tea, water, whatever's in the mug. That one sentence takes the pressure off anyone who isn't drinking, anyone it's too early for, and anyone who simply forgot.

Give it a few seconds. People will lean out of frame to get their cup. Let them come back before you start.

The cheers moment: unmute everyone or not

Decide this before the call, and tell the host what you want.

Small call, under about fifteen people: ask everyone to unmute and say "cheers" together on your count. It comes out as a delayed, overlapping jumble, and that jumble is the closest thing a video call has to a clink. People usually laugh at it. Say "unmute for one second" so nobody thinks they have to stay unmuted.

Big call, more than fifteen or twenty: don't unmute everyone. You'll get barking dogs, a blender, and the person who forgot they were on speakerphone in the car. Ask people to raise their glass to the camera, and to type "cheers" in the chat if their camera is off. Then the host can say the next thing.

Either way: after the cheers, the host should say something right away ("Okay, breakout rooms are open" or "Next up is the trivia round"), so the toast doesn't end in a long, awkward pause while forty people wonder whether to unmute.

Keep it under a minute

On a call, a minute is long. A minute is about 130 words at a normal pace, and on camera thirty to forty-five seconds often feels better. Paste your draft into the speech length calculator if you're not sure. If you wrote 250 words, you wrote two toasts. Pick one.

Video calls are also the end of a long day of video calls for most people. A short toast that lands is a kindness.

Hybrid parties: half in a room, half on screen

This is the hardest version, because it's easy to give a lovely toast to the people in front of you while the people on the laptop watch the side of your head.

• Talk to the screen first. Open by naming the people dialed in, so they know you know they're there.
• Fix the camera before you start. It should show faces, not the backs of chairs. If the laptop is at the end of a long table, move it to where you'll be standing.
• Use the room mic, or hold the laptop close. Remote people hear a big room as an echo. If there's no proper mic, stand near the laptop and speak toward it.
• Ask someone in the room to watch the chat. If the remote people type "can't hear you," you'll want to know before you get to the good part.
• Raise the glass toward the screen. When you get to the toast, turn and lift your glass to the camera. It takes two seconds and makes the remote people part of it instead of spectators.
• Pick a story both halves were there for. A moment from the shared chat or a call works better than something that happened at the office that the remote people only heard about.

When cameras are off

Some people keep their cameras off at virtual parties because of a bad connection, a messy kitchen, a kid in their lap, or simply because it's the end of the day. Don't ask them to turn cameras on for the toast, and don't joke about it. Give the toast to the camera as if everyone can see you, invite people to raise a glass whether they're on camera or not, and say "drop a cheers in the chat." That's enough.

A few things to set up first

• Close everything else. Turn off notifications and close any window you might accidentally share.
• Put the camera at eye level. A stack of books under the laptop works.
• Keep your notes next to the camera, not on a second screen, so your eyes stay close to the lens.
• Have your glass in frame before you start.
• Check that you're unmuted. Say one line before the toast ("Can everybody hear me?") and wait for a thumbs up.

6 virtual holiday party toasts

Names and details are placeholders. Keep the shape and use your own team's moments.

For a manager on a video call (about 50 seconds)

Okay, everybody, grab whatever's next to you. Coffee counts. So does that glass of water you've been ignoring.

This will be quick, since we've all been on calls since nine. Back in April, Gisela raised the little yellow hand on our Monday call to ask a question, and then forgot to lower it. It stayed up for forty minutes. Nobody said anything. By the end, three other people had raised theirs too, in solidarity.

That's this team. When one of us is stuck, the rest of us put our hands up.

Glasses up to the camera. To the team, and to the hand that stayed up.

Why it works: it tells people what to raise, uses a small thing that only happens on calls, and hands the moment back fast.

From a coworker, funny (about 45 seconds)

Hi, everyone. I'm Mateusz, and I was asked to do the toast because I'm apparently the only one who doesn't mute himself when he talks.

For anyone who's joined since spring, Wojtek's neighbor keeps chickens, including one rooster with no sense of time. He crows at seven in the morning, at two in the afternoon, and once during a client demo. We've learned to pause for him. We've learned to finish our sentences before him. And in October, the client asked if he'd be on the next call.

So raise whatever you've got. To the team, and to the rooster, who has never once been on mute.

Why it works: the joke is on a noise, not a person, and the whole team has heard it a hundred times.

For the founder of a small, fully remote company (about 1 minute)

Hi, everybody. Thanks for logging on for one more call. I promise this is the last one of the year, or at least the last one I'll schedule.

We don't have an office. What we have is a P.O. box at a post office twenty minutes from my house. I drive there once a week. Most weeks it's bills. But this month, it was full of holiday cards from clients, and almost every card named one of you. Thanks to Esmeralda for the setup call that ran three hours. Thanks to Nnamdi for answering on a Sunday. There were eleven of them, and I've got them lined up on my shelf.

We're nine people in six cities, and our only address is a little metal box. It turns out that's plenty.

Raise whatever you're holding. To all of you, and to the box.

Why it works: it admits the company has no office, and finds the one physical place that stands for all of them.

For a hybrid party, half in the room and half on screen (about 1 minute)

Before I start, I want to say hi to the people on the screen. Akira, Dorota, Siddharth, we can see you. You're on the cart by the window, and yes, we'll turn you around to see the food in a minute.

That cart has been part of this team all year. Every Tuesday, somebody wheels it into the conference room so the four of you can be at the meeting. In September it lost a wheel, and for three weeks we tipped it up on a binder so you weren't looking at the ceiling. Nobody filed a ticket. We just kept the binder there.

That's how this team works. Whoever's missing, someone makes room.

So everybody here, and everybody on the screen, glasses up. I'm turning toward the camera now. To the team, both halves of it.

Why it works: it speaks to the screen first, gives the remote people a moment that belongs to them, and raises the glass toward the camera.

For a team spread across three continents (about 50 seconds)

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, depending on where you are. Some of you are holding coffee, some are holding dinner, and I think Uchenna is holding both.

In March, the Halifax office mailed a rubber duck to Krakow, as a joke, with a note that said "your turn." Krakow sent it to Singapore. Singapore sent it back to Halifax. It has now been around the world four times, and it's wearing a tiny scarf that nobody will admit to knitting.

We've never all been in one room. But we've all held that duck.

Raise whatever's in front of you, whatever time it is. To the team, and to the duck.

Why it works: it names the time-zone problem in one line, then uses an object that physically traveled between the offices.

For a coworker who joined remotely this year (about 45 seconds)

I want to raise a glass to Noriko, who started in September and has never met a single one of us in person.

On her first week, she drew an org chart by hand and taped it to the wall behind her desk, so she could learn our names. It's still there. You can see it on every call. And she's been adding things to it. I'm on there with a little note that says "knows where the files are." That might be the nicest thing anyone's said about me this year.

Noriko, glad you're here. Everybody, glasses up. To Noriko, and to the chart.

Why it works: it welcomes the new person by pointing to something they did, so the toast is about them and not about how new they are.

Delivering it on camera

• Look at the lens, not the faces. It feels wrong. It looks right to everyone else.
• Lean in a little. A video call flattens energy. Speak a bit louder and slower than you would at your desk.
• Hold the glass up for two full seconds. On a call, that's the ending people need to see.
• Hand off. Say who's next, or tell people what happens now, so the call doesn't sit in silence.

If you want to hear how your toast lands before you give it, play it to the table of AI guests and see their reactions. If you're running the whole program, the holiday party emcee script has lines for every part of the night, and if your team is meeting for dinner in person this year instead, see the team holiday dinner toast guide. For anyone else who gets handed the mic, send them the office holiday party toast guide.