How Do I Survive a Low Alcohol or Alcohol-Free Christmas?
The festive season is notably one of the most difficult times to stick to your sober goals and keep up your mindful drinking habits. Christmas and alcohol go hand in hand, with almost every advert or Christmas-related celebration filled with references to alcohol. So how can you get through Christmas without alcohol? How do you celebrate an alcohol-free Christmas?
If this is your first low-alcohol or booze-free Christmas, you might be wondering how you can enjoy the holidays without alcohol. Well, don’t worry, you absolutely can have the best Christmas without alcohol, in fact, you might find this is your favourite Christmas yet!
Here are our top tips for keeping to your alcohol-free goals this Christmas.
1. Find The Parts of Christmas That You Find Special
Whilst it can feel like Christmas revolves around alcohol, especially if you have always celebrated it with lots of alcohol. But it doesn’t need to. There is so much that makes Christmas special without alcohol. So before the festive season begins find what you think makes Christmas special.
For me, there are two things that make Christmas really special, that is giving to people that I love, and food. So I spend months planning little Christmas surprises that will make my loved ones happy (like surprising my family with stockings from Santa), and I get really excited for the best meal of the year: Christmas dinner.
2. Make new Habits and rituals as part of the celebration
It might be that a lot of your Christmas traditions and rituals revolve around alcohol. Maybe you always go to the pub on Christmas Eve, or you get drunk on Christmas day and play drinking games. Well, the exciting thing about a sober Christmas is that you can now create new rituals that have nothing to do with drinking.
Maybe it means having a night in, buying new Christmas pyjamas and enjoying a hot chocolate and games night at home on Christmas Eve, or going for a post-Christmas dinner stroll instead of a drink. Or maybe it's starting the day with coffee and cake instead of mimosas. Or it could be as simple as substituting alcohol for alcohol-free drinks in your current traditions.
Whichever way, you need to replace your old, boozy traditions, with something that doesn’t involve alcohol, and you might discover a whole new layer to the Christmas spirit that you always missed before.
3. Tell people around you that you are going to be sober
Whilst it is no one else’s business whether you choose to drink alcohol or not, it can be very difficult to stay sober if people are always offering you alcohol. Therefore, being open about not drinking can help you avoid alcohol because people are less likely to offer you a drink, therefore, you can avoid temptation.
You might also find that you are not the only person looking to cut out or cut down on alcohol this Christmas. And having a buddy to avoid alcohol with can always help.
4. Get excited about an experience you haven’t yet had
Maybe this is your first booze-free Christmas. That means you are about to experience something you've never had before. Get curious!
What will your first alcohol-free Christmas look like? What might you have been missing out on before by drinking so much? How will it feel to wake up on Christmas day without a hangover? Instead of focusing on the FOMO of not drinking, start focussing on the JOMO. Finding this curiosity about a low-booze or booze-free Christmas without alcohol can be very rewarding and is exactly what the sober curious movement is all about.
5. Remember why you cut down on alcohol or don’t drink
Sometimes, being surrounded by adverts that tell us alcohol is necessary to have a good Christmas can make us forget why we quit drinking. Whatever your reason for no longer drinking or for cutting down on booze, make sure you remember it whenever you are tempted to take a drink. You might find this makes it easier to avoid alcohol. After all, you probably didn’t cut down or quit for no reason.
6. Make a plan for what you will drink in advance
If you are worried about slipping up, planning is always a good way to keep you on track. If you know exactly what you want to drink before the day, you won’t have any moments of indecision where you might panic and choose an alcoholic drink.
So get creative, choose a tasty drink to have on Christmas Eve, at the work Christmas party, with Christmas dinner. There are so many delicious alcohol-free drinks out there, and a million different alcohol-free cocktail recipes. There is no reason you need to drink something boring this year - just check the JOMO shop for inspiration.
7. Order JOMO and get excited about all the delicious alcohol-free drinks you can try
Overwhelmed by the number of alcohol-free drinks that are available and not sure which will taste nice? Then look no further than the JOMO subscription box. With a JOMO subscription, you will receive a box of different alcohol-free drinks to taste test each month.
Each box contains a full-sized bottle of an alcohol-free spirit, alongside the ingredients for a delicious cocktail, complete with mixers, garnish and snacks. The box also contains a number of pre-mixed, ready-to-drink alcohol-free beverages for you to sample. This way you can taste test a range of alcohol-free drinks and find the drink you are excited to enjoy during your low-booze or booze-free Christmas.
Sit Back and Enjoy Christmas
Christmas is a difficult time to stay sober, or cut down your drinking, but, it is a time for celebration and connecting with the people that you love. So celebrate yourself, your friends and your family and remember that you are doing something difficult and brave by cutting down your alcohol consumption or having an alcohol-free Christmas.
And, even though it seems scary, most likely you might find that this Christmas is the most special Christmas that you have ever had!