Single Lesbian at Christmas? How to Slay the Holidays Without a Plus-One

If you know you’ll be a single lesbian at Christmas this year, you might be dreading the holiday season. However, we’re here to tell you that you don’t need to! By reframing your holiday activities, you can track down the joy in every single one of them.

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We want you to be the best, brightest, and most fulfilled version of yourself. That will help you find happiness and, if you’d like, a partner who enables you to build on that happiness. Here, let’s chat about the best ways to boost your happiness as a single lesbian at Christmas.

Friendship is Vital, Especially at Christmas

Maintaining our existing friendships and cultivating new ones are both extremely important in our lives, whether a single lesbian at Christmas or otherwise. Humans are social creatures, which is why talking a problem over with a friend helps out so much. During the Christmas period, we can often feel a little isolated and alone, especially if we find ourselves not wanting to spend time with family. For queer folks, that’s a common occurrence.

In those moments, it can help to reach out to other members of the queer community around you. You might have a friend or two who’s willing to navigate a Christmas market with you, or perhaps volunteer somewhere. It could help to arrange a nightly phone or video call with a friend in the same situation as you: just venting to one another can make things easier.

As Lisa Gunn, writing for Nuffield Health, points out in an article on their site, “The internet has made connecting with others easier than ever.” So, if you find yourself without a friend or two nearby, check out online communities. Tons of hobbies have queer-focussed online groups, which can be a great place to start.

A Holiday Guide for the Single Lesbian at Christmas

Getting through the holidays can be a minefield, especially if you’re meeting up with a distant relative who may have many annoying questions about you being single, a lesbian, or both. Here are some good ways to manage.

• Queer-Focused Christmas Movies: There’s a surprising number of Christmas movies out there focused on lesbians, and checking a few out can be a welcome change from heteronormativity. According to Kira Deshler from Paging Dr Lesbian, “Friends & Family Christmas” is an excellent example of a queer and festive “fake dating” trope movie. What’s not to love about that?
• Have a Getaway (from Annoying Relatives) Plan: While parking a getaway car in your parents’ garage might be a little much, having a code word for when you need to sit in the next room isn’t. Chat to a trusted family member who will be at Christmas events with you, and arrange a fairly normal-sounding code word. When you say the word, the family member can make up an excuse to drag you away from another conversation about you being a single lesbian at Christmas.
• Make the Holiday Work for You: When we reunite with our families during the holidays, it can be easy to slip back into the childhood pattern of doing what family members tell you. However, you’re an adult now, and it’s not rude to set a boundary calmly and do what’s best for you. You don’t have to go on that traditional Boxing Day hike! In fact, a few of your relatives may even thank you for expressing that opinion and choose to stay at home with you. 
• Host a Family Competition: If you’re staying with your family, it’s easy to become a little stir-crazy as a single lesbian at Christmas. Avoid that by having some contests that you can all compete in and focus on! It’s a good idea to find craft kits for kids since those will be affordable, simple, and relatively accessible too. Alternatively, make a holiday-themed DIY kit! A good choice could be to pick up some plain cookies, fondant icing pens, and sprinkles. Before you know it, you’ve got a Christmas cookie decorating competition in the dining room!
• Plan Trips to Connect With Relatives: As we get older, we sometimes feel we’re moving away from certain relatives. In some cases, that’s for the best, and in others, it’s a little sad. If you want to connect with a family member that you’ve fallen away from, try planning a trip to do something you used to do together. For instance, you could take your grandparents to a diner for pancakes, or your aunt to a mall to buy books together.
• Dollar Store Stocking Stuffers: Of all our ideas for a single lesbian at Christmas, this is the best if you’ve got child relatives that you’d love to bond with. Go with one or two kids to a local dollar store, and challenge them to pick out a stocking stuffer for a specific family member. Help them out with some ideas, and maybe suggest alternatives if they’ve made an odd choice. After an hour or so, you’ll have some small gifts you can let the kids pass along, and it will only cost you a few dollars. The secret is that the gift is actually two gifts: the kid passes their parent the little stocking stuffer, and also you gave that parent a little quiet time in their hectic holiday season.

The holiday season can be messy and complicated. However, by finding the joy in the complexity and focusing on it, you can be a single lesbian at Christmas without feeling bummed out.