The Best Way to Celebrate Christmas When You're Single

Well, it’s the Christmas season again.  The busiest time of the year.  So much going on.  Can’t find a moment to rest.  “Let’s get together after the holidays when things aren’t so busy.”

Or not.

I don’t know about you, but the holiday season isn’t particularly busy for me. My work slows down, since people shopping for Christmas presents don’t often simultaneously shop for a house. My own Christmas shopping consists of five gifts for five children, which can usually be knocked out on Amazon in under an hour. Decorating my fake, pre-lit Christmas tree takes maybe another hour. I send out several hundred Christmas cards, which takes several days. So that’s probably my biggest time investment.

Surprisingly, my December isn’t engulfed in an endless swirl of parties. My office hosts a “holiday party,” so that’s one evening. Aside from that, not a whole lot. Most of my married friends are to busy with their own office parties, school activities, baking and much more elaborate shopping lists to be bothered with hosting their own Christmas parties. And my single friends? Well, I’m not entirely sure what they’re up to, but whatever it is, it doesn’t involve throwing elaborate Christmas soirees.

This used to bother me. I saw the Christmas season, along with New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day and my birthday, as some sort of Rorschach Test for popularity — and hence, my value as a human being.  If I’m not spending the weeks leading up to Christmas in a whirl of mistletoe-festooned activity, there must be something wrong with my life.

But then I remembered this concept called “Advent.”  Apparently the purpose of the weeks leading up to Christmas isn’t to cram in as much compulsory festivity as possible. It is to prepare for the coming of the Christ child — which happened in a manger 2000 years ago, but happens in our hearts every year — to the extent that we are prepared for it.

And that preparation requires prayer, which requires silence, which requires — you guessed it — time.

Which, lo and behold, I seem to have more of this month than a lot of people do.

It occurred to me that perhaps in this regard, we singles are the fortunate ones. We have a certain space in our lives that others may not. And we can use that space, if we so choose, to enter more deeply into the real Christmas season. Instead of spending these weeks stuffing ourselves with cookies and eggnog, we can spend it waiting. We can enter into the emptiness, saying “Come, Lord Jesus,” making room for Him in our hearts in our lives, and looking forward to that morning when He really will come.

And then we can celebrate.

I’m going to try to do it that way this year. I’ll go to the office “holiday” party. I’ll do my shopping and send out my cards. And I try to make time to pray, to prepare my heart for His arrival.

And then, after Christmas, when everybody is tired and burned out and stuffed full of cookies, I’m gonna throw a party. A big ole “Joy to the World” party.

Wishing all of you a blessed Advent and a joyous, festive Christmas!