I understand thet there are many personal reasons why some people don’t celebrate Christmas. The holiday season comes with many consecutive days off work – time to spend with family and loved ones. But this is not for everyone. So, even if you do not necessarily celebrate Christmas, the repose and festivity of the period are sometimes too infectious to ignore. For someone who does not celebrate Christmas, it may feel impossible to enjoy the holiday without actually celebrating Christmas. But not to worry, there are many ways to enjoy the holiday season even if you do not celebrate Christmas, and I want to share some of them below.
1. Have a Holistay
A holistay or staycation is one of the simplest ways to treat yourself during the holidays. It is a great option if you are not willing to travel far away for the holidays.
So, your Christmas plans could be as simple as enjoying some quiet time alone in your house or a hotel. If you do not fancy the cold weather in your area, you could go to a place where it’s warmer and lounge there.
2. Self-Gifting
If not celebrating Christmas like everyone else makes you feel left out, you could change that by buying yourself a gift. Just get yourself something you’ve always wanted.
3. Do Something Altruistic
If you’re up for it, you could do some volunteer work during the holiday and in the days before.
One way to volunteer or do something altruistic during Christmas is to sponsor the celebration of some low-income families. Some local businesses/stores have names of families that cannot afford gifts, toys, and similar items. You may check with some of those stores and offer to help. You may even get some families a Christmas tree and decorations.
Another way to make the holiday worth celebrating for other people is to throw a party for children in a shelter. Besides the party, you may also give presents to the kids.
4. Eat Out
You can spend your winter break on an activity as conventional as eating out. While most stores and restaurants would be closed, you can readily find a Jewish or Chinese restaurant open for business on Christmas day.
If you like Chinese food, this might be your opportunity to try it out. But if Chinese food isn’t your thing, you could try Jewish. These two types of restaurants are surely not the only ones open during Christmas. So, if you would rather not eat at either type of restaurant, you could check around for one that suits your taste.
5. Watch Movies
Instead of spending the holiday following your regular routine, you could watch some movies. It could be old movies or new releases – whatever you want.
You have the day to yourself, so you can have a movie marathon or binge a series you’ve been dying to watch. You may even invite some friends over to make it more fun.
If you would rather go out, you could go to a movie theater. Like Jewish restaurants, movie theaters stay open during the holidays.
6. Host a Fun Dinner
Besides seeing a movie with them, you can host your family and friends to a dinner on Christmas day.
Don’t just have a regular dinner, create fun rules around the dinner. Make it different, make it festive.
7. Make Your Own Holiday Tradition
Most people who do not celebrate Christmas create a tradition for themselves around the holiday. So, if you are up for it, you could create new traditions for yourself.
Your tradition could be the movie marathon we mentioned earlier. But you can make it unique by creating a theme for the marathon.
Your holiday routine may also be trying out new foods. It doesn’t always have to be Chinese, you could try other cuisines.
Your new holiday traditions may also include baking. If you love cooking or baking, you could use some free time to bake delicious vegan cookies.
8. Have a Day Out With Friends
Instead of planning how to celebrate Christmas alone, you and your friends can come together to make plans and give yourselves happy holidays. Each person in the group can suggest an activity while someone compiles them. Then together, you can all try out as many of those activities as possible.
You could go hiking, visit a bar, go ice skating, go ice fishing, and have a snowball fight. You may even have a snowman-building competition.
You may limit yourselves to an outing on December 25th. Then again, you could also plan for Christmas eve.
9. Go Shopping
There’s a good chance of getting some of the best discounts in December, especially around Christmas. Besides that, the stores may not be as crowded as they typically are because many people would be in their homes celebrating. So, you could take advantage of these 2 conditions and go shopping on Christmas day.
10. Clear Your Backlog
Of course, you’ll hardly find anyone going into the holiday season looking to soak themselves in work or some other similar task. But if this might be your only chance to clear your backlog, you should take the chance.
Since most of the world would be in a festive mood, you are unlikely to get any new work added to your already full table. So, consider the break a chance to start the coming year anew.
11. Play Games
In place of watching a movie or series, you can celebrate Christmas by playing games. You could play video games, board games, or any other game you fancy.
You can play the games for as long as you want. You have all the time to yourself. But then, if you are playing video games, we recommend you take healthy breaks between your game marathon.
Be it video games or board games, you can get family and friends to join in and make it more enjoyable. You could even have gifts for the winners of the games.
12. Read
Reading is another activity many people may not consider an alternative way to celebrate Christmas. But if you love reading, the holidays might be your chance to immerse yourself in a new novel. The novel could be one of the many presents you give yourself.
Reading is not limited to novels; you could also spend time searching for more detailed information on a new concept.
