How to Celebrate the Holidays Alone (& Heal Your Inner Child While You’re at it)
The holiday season is typically seen as merry & bright, joyful, celebratory, and the season for connection and family. But what if you spend the holidays alone, or don’t feel so connected to others? What if instead of feeling the warmth of loved ones in your life, you feel lonely, empty, and sad?
There are many reasons you might find yourself here. Maybe you’ve lost a loved one this year and the holiday season highlights their absence. Maybe you’ve gone through a divorce and the kids are spending the holidays at their other parent’s house, leaving you alone on the holiday. Maybe you’ve finally gone no contact with your own family, leaving you to celebrate without family members to lean on, and it’s stirring up old familial wounds from your childhood.
Whatever the reason, the holidays can be a tough time for many. But they’re also a great opportunity for healing and connecting more deeply with yourself. It gives you a chance to listen to your inner child and meet their needs, and also create new holiday traditions for yourself going forward.
The list below is oriented towards Christmas, but can be transferred to any holiday (including your birthday!), and aren’t exclusive to Christians (I’m a Buddhist myself, but grew up celebrating Christmas and still celebrate it each year).
(One other note about the holidays - this is a highly commercialized season rooted in often exploitive capitalism. Some people rebel against this and want to throw the whole holiday thing out, and I totally get that. While I do mention shopping in a couple of the items listed, by no means am I suggesting you indulge in capitalist overspending or feeling pressured to keep up with the Jones’. You can shop local (I like to shop from women-owned and BIPOC-owned companies when possible), make your own items, thrift gifts, and skip shopping or spending money altogether (many ideas listed are free). That being said, I personally love to shop (especially as an expression of love for myself!), and gift giving is my predominant love language. So shopping isn’t inherently bad. But no pressure here to participate in the heightened capitalist message that the only way to achieve the fulfillment you want it to buy all the latest things. I trust you to feel into this and decide what’s right for you.)
Ways to Celebrate the Holidays (& Heal Your Inner Child):
1. Bake & Decorate Cookies (get messy!)
16. Get into the mindset of celebration. Ask yourself, “If I got ONE Christmas alone, how would I like to enjoy it?”
2. Taking an evening to wrap all my shopping/Christmas gifts/holiday treats to give away with Christmas music on and a holiday drink, or with a holiday movie in the background. Make a night of it and feel delighted at the gifts under the tree.
3. Watch a Christmas/Hallmark movie.
4. Write a letter to “Santa” (the universe, spirit) about my desires (manifesting ritual).
5. Buy presents for myself, wrap and place under tree (maybe a stocking too!)
6. Get gifts for my child self - a puzzle, or the cool 90’s toy I always wanted but never got, or getting some Lisa Frank school supplies. Whatever lights up my inner child so she feels delighted, and not bored with just the adults gifts for myself now.
7. Wrap some cookies to give away (neighbors, unhoused people, bell-ringing people at grocery store, etc).
8. Write a letter to my childhood self, telling her all the special things we do for the holidays now, and setting new holiday traditions (maybe checking in with her in a meditation or in therapy to ask what traditions she’d like to do to celebrate).
9. Take a bubble bath Christmas morning or Christmas eve the night before, glass of wine, read, Christmas jazz.
10. Buy a set of holiday pjs/robe/slippers for Christmas time
11. Decorate home - inside and out - with special Christmas or festive things (can be big or small little touches)
12. Do a Christmas photo shoot - do professional portraits at Sears (are they still a thing?) or get friends to shoot some pics of you. Or get silly and have some props (santa hat, elf ears) and set up a tripod and do a shoot at home!
13. Attend a special Christmas afternoon tea at a tea house or hotel that offers them. Dress up!
14. Do a karaoke night with friends - all Christmas songs! Make holiday cocktails and get rowdy.
15. Schedule dedicated time for NOT doing - slow down, don’t plan or prep, decline a holiday party invite. Take some time in the busy season to get S-L-O-W and create some intentional space in the calendar for just being.
17. Create art - make for decorating the house, make for myself as art therapy, creating a painting as my Christmas day activity, making art to give away to others, making my own wrapping paper by painting on large sheets of brown paper.
18. Attend Christmas eve service at church or spiritual community.
19. Write blogs / record podcasts to share about my experience. Even simply recording the process in a journal.
20. Wrap a book and read Christmas day with favorite holiday drink.
21. Do a vision board night, put on a hallmark movie in the background, get out the magazines, and make a vision board for 2024. Plan the year, set some goals, make new years resolution’s. Pick your word for the year (white stone ceremony?)
22. Drive around looking at Christmas lights with holiday music playing and some hot cocoa.
23. Spend time in nature - hike, cross country ski or snow shoe, going to a nice view point, and enjoying the beauty of nature, pack a special holiday drink, bring a journal, meditate, take it in, have a holiday with the woodland creatures like a Disney princess.
24. Volunteer at an animal shelter. Kitties and pups don’t know it’s Christmas. Spend some time with them so they’re not alone on the holiday.
25. Pull some oracle cards or do a tarot reading.
26. Acts of service for others / volunteer at church or holiday dinner somewhere.
27. Many zoos, botanic gardens, or other attractions in cities have evening light shows now. Get a ticket and stroll through your local botanical gardens or zoo and enjoy the lights sipping on cocoa!
28. Write holiday card/letter to myself, mail with a holiday stamp! (Maybe throw in a starbucks gift card to treat myself later.)
29. Zoom party with friends afar.
30. Do holiday shopping - make a fun day out of it, wearing a festive holiday outfit, getting a holiday drink at starbucks, hitting the fancy mall, stopping for a special lunch out, carrying all my shopping bags and feeling amazing. Donating at the bell-ringing at the front of the stores. ENJOYING a shopping day instead of making it a chore.
Write your own list of holiday traditions you love to reference in future years, and make your very own holiday rituals and traditions to keep!
This year I have decided that even though my inner child didn’t get what she needed, I can offer her a special holiday experience now as the adult in her life. Getting to reparent my own inner child and create the holiday traditions between just us has been healing, and keeps me from feeling lonely, even when I spend the holidays alone.
What holiday traditions are you creating for yourself this year?
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