6 Things Every Single Person Should Do This Holiday Season

If you’re like me, the last thing you need during the holidays is a reminder that you’re single.

There are holiday activities you can do with your friends, such as finding a Christmas tree, going ice skating, or attending a holiday concert. But, let’s be real: these places are also likely to surround you with couples, and we don’t need to focus on that right now.

Instead, I’ve come up with a few different ways to spend time with your friends and family over the holiday season that put less focus on couples and more focus on fun (and connecting with others).

Game Nights

After my 30th birthday party, I decided that I wanted to gather all of my closest friends in one place more often, so I started having regular game nights. It’s been really great to see my friends become friends with each other, but it’s also a nice distraction from being single. No one there cares if you’re single, dating someone, or even married. We’re only there for one purpose: to destroy each other at board games (and, you know, have fun). Our focus is on friendship and having fun, not on discussing how we single friends are still single. 

Since Christmas is coming up, we’ve decided to have a gift exchange among us game-players. It’s nice to shift your focus on how you’re now obligated to buy an awesome, secret gift for a friend instead of how you have no significant other to buy gifts for.

Holiday Movies

Make a list of your favorite holiday movies with a friend and have multiple movie nights. Make it a goal to get through your entire movie list before Christmas. No, not the ones about falling in love (as is the theme of every Hallmark movie), avoid those like mustard on a vanilla sundae! Rather, for example, go for the classic movies that you’ve always loved, or maybe ones that you haven’t seen in a while: Charlie Brown, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Frosty the Snowman, whatever will bring you nostalgic or cozy Christmas feelings. 

Christmas Ornaments

Starting the day after Thanksgiving, have you and another friend (or two) separately make homemade Christmas tree ornaments for each other. Decide how many days a week you’d like to dedicate to ornament making. Even if you go to the dollar store and just tie together different colors of pipe cleaner, or color a pre-made wooden ornament, have fun with creating for each other. Pick a date towards the end of the month to exchange your ornaments. They’ll be little trinkets that you can keep for years and years in memory of your friendships.

Holiday Books

To bring back some of that Christmas nostalgia from childhood, pick your favorite holiday books from childhood, such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Night Before Christmas, The Polar Express, or any other Christmas books you loved as a child. This may take some research.

Pick a day of the week, starting on the first week of Christmas, to get on video chat with a friend (or in-person) and read each other your favorite books. Talk about why you like them, what they meant to you as a child, a specific memory they bring back, etc. You can even throw some new book discoveries into the conversation as well! This is a lovely way to bring friends closer together by bonding over personal memories and thoughts.

Scavenger Hunt

After reminiscing over Christmas movies and books, go take a ride around your neighborhood or wherever has a lot of Christmas decorations and see how many Christmas characters you can find. Not only search for characters from your books and movies, but search for rare decorations that are not always obvious. Take separate cars if you can and make it a competition.

Santa, of course, is everywhere. It wouldn’t take a long time to rack up points searching for Santa. Elves, however, are not as common to spot. How many Rudolph’s can you find? How many Abominable snowmen? How many Snoopy’s? Don't forget to look for Baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, too!

Charity

Now, let’s take the focus off of ourselves and focus on what we can do to be Christ-like during the holiday season, because, as nice as it is to do holiday activities, Christmas isn’t about us and our single woes—it’s about Christ. During these frustrating Covid times, many charitable organizations most likely aren’t allowing in-person volunteers, but if you discover a food pantry or Soup Kitchen that’s currently accepting volunteers, consider taking your friends to help those who are less fortunate.

Those who are struggling need to know that people care about them, and this is especially prevalent around Christmas. Around the holidays, much of the world is focused on consumerism while others are still simply trying to feed themselves. Here’s a list of Soup Kitchens in the United States. Even if you decide that volunteering isn’t for you and you’d like to simply donate items, here’s a list of frequently needed items at Soup Kitchens. 

If your interests lie in helping children, there’s also the option to volunteer at a children’s hospital and read or play games with kids, or, since we’re already being crafty with our Christmas ornaments, why not make some cards? While you’re at the dollar store, pick up some construction paper and glue, stickers, glitter, and whatever else would look good in a Christmas card. Then, get together with your friends and create some holiday “get well soon” cards to send to children at different children’s hospitals to cheer them up. Here’s a list of children’s hospitals in the United States. 

Don’t forget our members of the military who are separated from their families during the holidays. Create some thank you cards for our service members and send them here, or donate some essential items to fill care packages. 

Believe me, I know how disheartening it can feel to be single around the holidays.

Often, just when I think I have a handle on my “be patient and let God bring me my future spouse” mindset, something comes along to disrupt that patience.

But, this year, I encourage you, instead of wasting the holidays wishing that you had a significant other to share it with, embrace this beautiful season with the many loved ones you have in your life right now!

Trust me, you won't regret it.