The invite says "Virtual Holiday Celebration", it is ninety minutes on a Thursday, and you already know how it goes: a grid of faces, a quiz nobody answers, a round of "share your favourite holiday memory", and the slow realisation at minute forty that there are fifty minutes left. You want to say something. You also know that "can we not" is the one thing that does not work.
It does not work because your manager is not trying to have a party. They are trying to have done something. The December event is the one piece of team activity that gets noticed if it is missing, so it goes in the calendar whether or not anyone wants it, and the shape it takes is whatever required the fewest decisions. Telling them it is a bad idea asks them to make more decisions. Telling them you have a better one, already worked out, asks them to make none.
Why the default fails, in words you can use
Before the scripts, the argument, in a form that does not sound like you are being difficult.
A video call with a quiz bot fails for structural reasons, not because the team is unfriendly. On a grid of twelve, people can only talk in turn. So the call becomes three people talking and nine people watching, with nothing to look at but faces and no polite way to leave. The drink does not fix that. The quiz does not fix that, because a quiz is still people answering in turn. Adding a Santa hat does not fix that.
What fixes it is a thing in the middle: something the group has to operate together, where attention goes to the thing and not to the faces. The format matters more than the budget, and the format your manager picked by default is the one that cannot work regardless of budget.
You do not need to say all of that. You need to say the last sentence.
What to propose instead
The replacement has to be easier to say yes to than the thing it replaces. That rules out "let's do a proper event" with no specifics, because that hands your manager a project.
Offer one of these two, depending on size.
For a team, up to about fifteen people: a ten-minute co-op challenge in a browser. A link in the chat, no signup, no installing, no host. The level cannot be cleared by one person, so the people who click it have to talk to each other, about the level, not about themselves. It is free and it does not need a calendar slot. Your manager can try it with two colleagues before agreeing to anything, which is the point: you are not asking them to trust a description.
For a company, or anything that has to look like a December event: a hosted game of 70 to 90 minutes. A professional host holds the room, teams of four to eight work through a story, and there is a clear end. It has a price, published in full and flat per event with the host included, from $550 for a small team to $6,800 for a thousand people. The game chosen does not change the price. That matters for the conversation, because "it costs X, here is the page" is a decision your manager can make in one reply.
Either way, the event has a shared object, nobody is on the spot, and it ends when the clock says so. Those are the three things the default lacks.
Three scripts
The Slack message, when you are not the organiser
Short, specific, and with the thing already attached.
Saw the holiday call on the calendar. Quick thought: those tend to go quiet after the first twenty minutes because there is nothing to do except talk in turn. There is a ten-minute browser game a few of us tried that works a lot better with a group. Link here if you want to try it with two people first, no signup. Happy to help set up the longer version if you'd rather do that.
What this does: it names the problem without blaming anyone, hands over something that can be tried in ten minutes, and offers to take the work. It does not say "bad idea".
The one-to-one, when you have been asked for input
You have been asked what the team would like, which is an opening and a trap. "Nothing" is honest and useless. Use the opening.
I think the format is the risk, more than the budget. A call with a quiz is what people are tired of. If we do something, the thing that works is a game the group has to solve together, with a host for a big group or a short browser one for a small one. I can send a link to the short one so you can see what I mean before we pick anything.
What this does: it moves the conversation from "whether" to "which", and from your opinion to something your manager can try.
The version for when you are the one organising
This is the hardest case, because now the decision is yours and the default is tempting for exactly the reason it tempted your manager. Two rules.
First, run the small version before announcing the big one. Post the ten-minute link in a channel on an ordinary day with no fanfare. Watch who plays and what they say. If it lands, you have a reason to book the hosted version that is better than "I read it would be good". If it does not, you have lost ten minutes and learned something.
Second, when you do book, book early. December hosted events fill the second and third weeks first, and booking opens in early November for most vendors. The team that decides in late November is choosing from what is left.
When the holiday Zoom is actually fine
Honesty requires this section. A team of five that already likes each other, with a manager who keeps it to forty minutes and does not run a quiz, has a perfectly good time on a video call in December. The format fails at scale and under facilitation. If neither applies, say nothing and enjoy it.
The problem is that almost no company event is five people and forty minutes. It is forty people and ninety, with a facilitator and a slide deck, and that is the one worth replacing.
The thing to send
Everything above reduces to one move. Do not argue with the event. Send the link, with one line, and let your manager try the better version with two colleagues before anyone decides anything. The ten minutes make the case better than you can, and nobody has to be told their idea was bad.