35 Deck your hall walls with strings of sparkling fairy lights.
36 Create some hand-made Christmas decorations and decorate your home – make them eco-friendly!
37 Choose a different theme for your Christmas. Research a different culture and recreate their traditional foods, drinks and decorations.
38 Create a Christmas playlist of your favourite songs to play throughout the festive period.
39 Seek out your single friends and invite them over for Christmas Day.
40 Treat yourself to a gorgeous new sustainable outfit that will stand the test of time.
41 Buy 12 different flavoured, very expensive hand-made Swiss chocolates and eat just one every day for the 12 days of Christmas.
42 Check the opening hours of local pubs and restaurants and treat yourself to a drink and at least one meal out this Christmas. Book a decadent solo lunch at a busy time, and no one will notice you are dining solo.
43 Buy yourself a special Christmas gift and resist the temptation to open it and use it until Boxing Day. Can you do it?
44 Give yourself a new look and learn how to apply makeup with a YouTube tutorial. Do you want smokey eyes? Fuller lips? Neater eyebrows? You got it!
45 Buy a gift for yourself that will arrive in the days following New Year.
46 Walk in a local park and enjoy watching people spending time together.
47 Treat your dog or cat to a day of pampering.
48 Borrow a dog for Christmas! Many people go away at Christmas and cannot take them along. Help out someone local by joining Borrow My Doggy and looking after a cute pooch in your home over Christmas.
49 Take part in a Parkrun and then spend the day recovering!
50 Take a drive to a town or village you have never visited before.
51 Start a conversation with a stranger – you may make a new friend!
52 Bake a batch of Christmas cookies and give them to your neighbours.
53 Buy and wrap up some spare gifts to keep for unexpected visitors.
54 Hide a small surprise gift in a friend’s home. See how long it takes them to find it.
55 Wrap a gift and leave it on your neighbour’s front doorstep.
56 Bake some festive-themed fairy cakes to take to work on the last day before Christmas.
57 Hand-write a letter to an elderly relative that doesn’t do digital.
58 Volunteer at one of your favourite local charities for a day or more.
59 Hold a Christmas tea party for lonely elderly locals through Reengage.
60 Ask your local hospital if you can visit patients on Christmas Day to read them stories or the newspaper.
61 Call in on an elderly neighbour for a cup of tea and a chat.
62 Host a Christmas drinks drop-in one afternoon for your friends going to and from places. Maximum stay 40 minutes!
63 Organise a Christmas movie fest with back-to-back festive-themed movies.
64 If you go to church, ask if you can help out with anything for a day.
65 Find a barista or waiter working extra hard and give them a generous Christmas tip.
66 Load your iPod full of Christmas carols, go for a walk and sing along loudly to make people smile. (Just witnessed someone doing this the other day!).
67 Spend a day surfing the internet – without feeling guilty!
68 Check out app stores for life-hacking apps that will help and save you time next year.
69 Chat with new friends on Facebook groups and get to know other solos at Christmas time.
70 Make a day of video calling your friends around the globe.
71 Spend a day researching a brand new hobby.
72 Make your own Christmas playlist of your favourite songs, festive or not so much!
73 Choose three books to read from your ‘must read’ booklist. Or create your ‘must-read’ booklist—the one you have been meaning to read for some time now.
74 Use your imagination to write a short story. Share it with a friend and get some feedback.
75 Choose a favourite song to use as a backing track and re-write the lyrics to create a modern Christmas Carol.
76 Write a short film script where you act out all of the parts.
77 Research the history of Christmas and make a YouTube video of your results. See if it goes viral.
78 Remember the 5000-piece jigsaw you bought last Christmas now gathering dust? It’s time to get that jigsaw done – accept the challenge!
79 Try to set a new world record and submit it to Guinness World Records.
80 Load up NORAD Santa Tracker, visit Santa’s Village and follow Santa as he goes around the world in real-time.
81 Use Google Earth to see 360-degree sites where Santa lands – even uninhabited islands.
82 Fancy a crafty Christmas? Challenge yourself to a simple yet fun day of crafting by choosing a craft and following the steps on instructables.com.
83 Set yourself a challenge to learn how to knit. Your task is to knit yourself a Christmas jumper to wear next year. Good luck with this one!
84 Choose a piece of your furniture to upcycle to give it a new look or new purpose—anything from a trinket box to a sideboard.
85 Learn how to make felt ornaments on WikiHow. Challenge yourself to make one new felt ornament each month, so you have 12 hand-made ornaments to hang on your Christmas tree next year
86 Become a ‘house-sitter’! Do a Kate Winslet this Christmas and swap your home (and life) with someone else, just like in the Christmas film, The Holiday.
87 Stay in a hotel between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day and feel part of the festive hustle and bustle.
88 Go on a Christmas spa break, relax and let yourself be pampered and waited on, hand on foot.
89 Visit a country that doesn’t celebrate Christmas in the same way and enjoy a different culture.
90 Go on an adventure or activity break and try a new experience.
91 Go on a wellness retreat in a sunny and distant location.
92 Check out Google’s Arts and Culture App and visit art galleries and museums worldwide from your armchair.
93 Savour being single by making a list of things that you are NOT going to miss at Christmas, like sitting at a table dodging awkward questions from others about marriage, being single, politics and children.
94 Revise your daily routine to see if you can make time savings somewhere. How’s your morning routine, by the way?
95 Take a challenge and set a goal. It could be to finish a crossword book, write a blog post or level up three times on a video game.
96 Thinking about making a career move in the New Year? Get your plans in order by updating your CV (A little boring? Maybe, but you will be ahead of the crowd come New Year.).
97 Dig out last year’s New Year resolution list and do something on that list that you haven’t accomplished yet.
98 Forget Christmas for one day and do something normal instead.
99 Give your garden an overhaul by raking up leaves and removing dead plants.
100 Wrap up warm and sit in the garden drinking hot chocolate while reading a book.
If you’ve managed to read thus far, you may be wondering where number 101 is on our list. Let’s just say if you are spending Christmas alone, it really is a time and day of your choosing. Spend the festivities and Christmas day as you wish – packed with activities or doing very little. It’s up to you. Whatever you choose, feel good about it! You only have yourself to please (and you’re instructed not to feel bad about this, either!). From celebrating in unusual ways to exploring the outdoors, you’ll find spending Christmas alone and relying on your own company can be surprisingly enjoyable – so why not embrace it?
4 thoughts on “101 Ideas If You’re Spending Christmas Alone”
Thank you for this loving and practical list of things to do on Christmas.
I’ve just lost my adored husband, Joe, this year. I know that there are many people who have also lost precious loved ones recently. And that makes celebrating Christmas a bit challenging,
But do recall one Christmas years ago that I sat alone singing Christmas hymns and making a gratitude list. It was one of the loveliest, most uplifting days I’ve ever enjoyed.
So I may include these activities along with ideas you’ve shared this Christmas.
I’d like to wish you and your son a very special Christmas this year, too!
With Christly love,
Rosalinda Johnson
Auckland, New Zealand
Thank you for this list. I am alone by choice and finding ideas for how to still celebrate is difficult at best. Most posts focus on not being depressed or not feeling too lonely and that sort of thing is completely unhelpful when this is a conscious choice.
This is a great list of ideas for those spending Christmas alone! It’s nice to see that there are plenty of ways to make the holiday special, even if you’re not with family or friends.
This is a great list of ideas for those spending Christmas alone! It’s nice to see that there are plenty of ways to make the holiday special, even if you’re not with family or friends.