I've spent quite a few Christmases away from home. When I was a server, I worked holidays, and one year i was horribly sick. Since 2012 I've mostly spent them alone or with my boyfriend + friends. I have some thoughts about how to make it all a little merrier, if it helps.

1. Atmosphere. Throw up a good tree, sparkle lights, advent candles, Christmas scented candles. Display all Christmas cards you receive prominently on wall or shelves. Go crazy. Play your favorite Christmas albums on loud. Bake sugar cookies.

2. Send an abnormal amount of handwritten Christmas cards. The act of composing a message for a loved one by hand, choosing the card, and putting it in the mailbox is like sending a part of your heart. It also takes time, so finishing it feels like a big sigh of relief.

3. Spend time actually wrapping gifts. Anything you get to hand deliver should be a visual feast. It's special to watch an elegant gift get unwrapped.

4. Common denominator with these tips is to keep things elegant and intentional. You don't get to be present in person, so it's all the more helpful to relationships if you can send a pretty and thoughtful emissary of yourself out the the world that lands with a loved one.

5. For Midnight Mass (or whatever safe worship setting you can find during COVID, not telling you to go if no obligation), dress up! Go see a concert. Get fancy. Create that sense of occasion. Refuse to wallow.

6. Remember that the hope of Jesus coming into the world is sort of like the hope we have for the holidays - that someday we too will come home, and that just because somebody feels absent doesn't mean they are.