There are good reasons to spend Christmas alone, and not everyone wants to be with family or friends. Just because your co-worker has turned down an invitation for dinner does not mean she is depressed or that she is perpetuating a sense of loneliness that you need to be worried about.
In fact, there are lots of people who choose this time in particular for solitude. Here are five ways to enjoy a quiet but worshipful Christmas.
1. Go on Holiday
I travel alone all the time. The last time I was on an airplane, someone sat next to me whose mother was dying of cancer and he was yearning for some kind of spiritual answers.
He couldn’t fix his mother, but he could place his hope in something bigger, so we talked, and he heard the gospel.
I don’t know what came of that conversation, but I’ve yearned for more like it ever since. Now, when I go away, I pray for the Lord to send someone my way who is eager to hear the Christmas message that God came down: Immanuel.
I’m alone, but on holiday people tend to find each other anyway, if only for a short time. They don’t invite each other over for dinner necessarily but make that fleeting contact, which can have an impact without imposing self-sought isolation.
This can be enough time to interrupt secular thoughts with the possibility that this festive season was never meant to revolve around gifts and excessive eating.
I’m alone for a reason — I don’t want to spend hours in the company of even my best friends because I desperately need to recharge.
But I don’t want to be solitary the whole time, and usually, I’m not the only one. When I’m on a Christmas holiday, this could be the best opportunity to be bold for Christ: if I ask about Jesus and you get angry, I won’t bump into you at work or in the checkout line at a supermarket.
2. Choose Prayer Over Pastries
The influence of Christmases past, plus advertising, and the general talk around our staff room leads to the conclusion that we must eat all the Christmas food.
The clock is ticking — you have precisely three weeks in which to consume a year’s worth of sugar cookies. After that, the calories count, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I try not to subscribe to that nonsense, but it’s hard.
What I would rather do this year is just remove myself from the temptation around baked goodness and make this Christmas about something even sweeter: prayer.
With no deadlines, no schedule, and no one expecting anything from me (if we are so fortunate), this is an opportunity to devote more time to conscious, on-my-knees prayer.
Perhaps some of you feel the same and will even select a day shortly after Christmas during which to fast and pray, particularly if you did buy into the pastry panic of the season (I did).
I’m not saying you should wait for Christmas to pray, but when it comes to really soaking in prayer, looking for direction in prayer, and hearing God’s answers, we feel so rushed during a typical day. “Even as God in human flesh, he prioritized time alone with his Father,” wrote David Mathis.
Sure, we pray, but we pray while brushing our teeth, driving, or cleaning. There’s nothing wrong with that, but distractions can lead to a sense of incomplete prayer.
A solitary Christmas is full of time and space to talk to God and really listen; to nurture that relationship instead of being that person who talks and talks but doesn’t wait to find out what the other person says in response, or what’s on his mind.
“Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known” (Jeremiah 33:3).
3. The Flexible Friend
Being alone makes me flexible. I can make an impromptu invitation, suddenly choose to meet a person in a coffee shop, and stay for hours talking. I can accept an invitation to breakfast or post-turkey tea with a co-worker.
If I grumble to myself, “Do I have to?” I hear Christ saying, “I came to you, now go to them.” Or, if I hear the Spirit saying, “Spend time with me,” I can do that instead.
It’s all about being interruptible and flexible. Joseph Tenney remarked, “The Christian’s job is to listen to God and care about what God says above all else, in every moment. [...] However, the moment we make our priority an ultimate thing, and give no allowance for God to interrupt us.”
We must ask, “Have we become so deluded and self-absorbed that we actually think we’re being good stewards of our time?” Tenney described a scene where even a pastor or missionary, so bent on his work, walks past the need God has placed in front of him.
This is part of where prayer comes in; asking God to make those needs obvious and to open the eyes of my heart.
I hate to think of how many times I probably missed what the Lord was trying to show me because I was set on my plan. At Christmas, I try not to plan too rigidly and let this be a season of flexibility, but without frittering away that time either.
4. Intervention and Conviction
For example, even if I’m not eating a lot of cookies, I could be baking them for others. I find the kitchen a place to really focus on God rather than what I’m doing because the work is familiar. When I stir or knead, the Lord speaks to me, sometimes convicting; always tender, merciful, and direct.
There are even some object lessons in baking and cooking that catch me off guard. It doesn’t matter how many times I make a cake: I never fail to remember how the batter tastes best with a pinch of salt, we must be the salt (Colossians 4:6); how the batter looks inedible until I bake it: don’t trust the outside appearance (1 Samuel 16:7) and have patience, waiting for the transformation that comes with the Lord’s Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).
And then, after all the work is done and the dishes are cleaned (or loaded in the dishwasher), there are tasty, colorful treats to share whether as a gift left on a doorstep, handed out to Salvation Army bell ringers, or eaten with friends when we don’t want to be alone anymore. Plus, the taste-testing, but just a little bit.
5. Rest in the Lord
I’ll bet many readers, if asked how their week was, would sigh loudly and declare, “Busy!” We all need regular rest; God even commands that we enjoy the Sabbath with him.
This day of rest is critical to our well-being and is a way to show that we trust God — or to practice trying to trust if nothing else.
We have to do this weekly because it definitely does take practice and trusting becomes easier as we see that the Lord is faithful. Besides, how can we hear God when we aren’t resting at all?
A Christmas alone could be the ideal chance to catch up on Sabbath rest. This doesn’t have to be a time of constant doing, not if you don’t want it to be.
Christmas can bring a lot of pressures with it: pressure to perform, to buy the best gifts, to socialize, and so on. But that pressure isn’t what the season is about. Immanuel did not come down to make us busy; he came down to get close to us.
We can’t let him if we don’t stay in one spot long enough. Get alone with God and let him remind you of how and why he came to be with us. Let that quiet time lead to reflection about Christ’s death and resurrection.
When Alone Time Gets Old
Just beware of that creeping sensation that moves from restful solitude to depressing loneliness. Don’t let your alone time develop into a habit.
Mathis commented, “We carve out a season for spiritual respite, in some momentarily sacred space, to feed our souls, enjoying God there in the stillness. Then we enter back in, as light and bread, to a hungry, harassed, and helpless world.”
Engage solitude wisely, and know when to re-engage, or even make an arrangement to check with someone (perhaps another friend who has chosen to be alone this Christmas), just to be sure neither of you takes your solitude to extremes.
If you have a hard time knowing the difference between restful solitude and becoming a hermit, remember Christ’s own example. He always came back, and He will come back.
For further reading:
3 Ways to Keep Jesus at the Center of Your Christmas This Year
How Do We Inwardly Prepare for Christmas?
So What’s for Christmas This Year?
Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/Olga Yefimova
