The hardest part of my first alcohol-free holidays wasn’t actually the holidays.
It was all the thinking about the holidays.
- What am I going to drink?
- What if someone asks why I’m not drinking?
- What if they keep asking?
- Will I feel awkward?
- Will everyone else suddenly seem annoying?
- Will I still have fun?
- Will I want to leave Thanksgiving dinner at 7:14?
- What about Christmas Eve?
- What about New Year’s Eve?
- What about the champagne toast?
And perhaps the most terrifying question of all:
Am I really supposed to do all of this completely sober?
I could spend days worrying about an event that, more often than not, turned out to be completely fine.
That’s one of the biggest things I learned during my first holidays without alcohol.
The anticipation was often worse than the actual thing.
And when the actual thing was uncomfortable?
I learned I could leave.
Revolutionary.
If you’re heading into your first sober or alcohol-free holiday season, or you’re simply sober-curious and wondering what Thanksgiving through New Year’s might look like without drinking, you don’t need to figure out the entire season today.
You just need a little bit of a plan.
Why the Holidays Feel So Weird Without Alcohol
Alcohol gets woven into a lot of our lives without us really noticing it.
But holy shit, does it get woven into the holidays.
Wine with Thanksgiving dinner.
Mimosas on Christmas morning.
Cocktails at the work party.
Champagne on New Year’s Eve.
Beer while watching football.
A glass of wine while wrapping presents.
A drink because your family is delightful.
A drink because your family is decidedly not delightful.
Alcohol isn’t just something we drink during the holidays. For a lot of us, it becomes part of how we mark the occasion.
So when you remove it, you’re not necessarily just removing a beverage.
You’re messing with a ritual.
That distinction ended up being really important for me.
Because once I realized I missed the ritual as much as the alcohol, I could start rebuilding the ritual without bringing back all the shit I didn’t miss.
Decide What You’re Drinking Before You Get There
This sounds ridiculously simple, but it helped me enormously.
Don’t show up to a holiday party hoping there will be something besides tap water and a dusty can of Diet Coke.
Bring something you actually want to drink.
I liked beer.
I loved wine.
Hard liquor was never really my thing, unless we’re counting copious amounts of margaritas, which we probably should.
So when I stopped drinking, I thought I had to give up the whole experience.
Eventually I realized I didn’t.
I could crack open an NA beer.
I could pour something delicious into a pretty glass.
I could add the lime.
I could make a festive mocktail at Christmas.
I could still hold a drink while talking to someone at a party.
I could still have that moment at the end of the day where I poured something and told my brain:
Okay. We’re done now.
I could keep the ritual.
I just didn’t have to wake up at 3 a.m. with my heart pounding, wonder what I’d said the night before or lose half of the next day recovering from it.
Keep the ritual. Lose the consequence.
I’ve written an entire article about whether drinking non-alcoholic options is “cheating” because apparently we have managed to make even not drinking something we’re capable of overthinking.
Spoiler: I don’t think it is.
Have an Answer Ready for “Why Aren’t You Drinking?”
I used to think I needed a compelling explanation.
Something airtight.
Something that would make the other person nod solemnly and never ask a follow-up question.
You don’t.
You are not presenting a dissertation on your relationship with alcohol.
You can say:
“I’m not drinking tonight.”
“I’m taking a break.”
“I feel better when I don’t drink.”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
That’s it.
You also don’t have to use the word sober if you don’t want to.
You don’t have to announce that you’ve quit forever.
You don’t have to explain how much you used to drink.
You don’t have to convince anyone that your reasons are legitimate.
And if someone keeps pushing after you’ve answered?
That’s information about them, not a requirement for you to provide a more satisfying answer.
Most People Care Less Than You Think They Do
This was another big surprise for my ego.
I spent an enormous amount of time worrying about what other people would think about me not drinking.
Most people did not care nearly as much as I imagined they would.
They might ask.
They might notice.
They might even be curious.
And then something else happens and everyone moves on with their lives.
Meanwhile, I had spent three days preparing my defense.
There are exceptions, of course.
Sometimes your decision makes another person uncomfortable.
Sometimes someone will try to get you to drink because they don’t want to examine why your not drinking bothers them.
You don’t have to solve that either.
Your job is not to make everyone else comfortable with your decision.
Your job is to decide what’s best for you.
Give Yourself Permission to Leave
This one deserves its own heading because I apparently spent the first several decades of my life unaware that I was allowed to leave things.
You can go home.
You can drive yourself.
You can stay for an hour.
You can skip the after-party.
You can leave when everyone gets loud.
You can decide you’re done when you’re done.
You don’t get a special prize for being the last sober person standing at a party you stopped enjoying two hours ago.
And this is one of the great hidden perks of not drinking:
You can drive yourself home whenever the hell you want.
Make an exit plan before you arrive if that helps.
Then use it.
What Happens When Everyone Else Starts Getting Drunk?
There is a very specific moment at a party when you’re not drinking and suddenly realize:
Ohhhhh. Everyone is drunk now.
The volume goes up.
Stories start repeating.
People stand slightly too close to your face.
Someone tells you something you absolutely did not need to know.
And the conversation that was funny at 8:30 somehow becomes significantly less fascinating at 10:45.
This can feel strange the first few times.
It can also be incredibly educational.
I had spent years experiencing parties while drinking along with everyone else. Seeing the progression while completely sober was…ahem, illuminating.
You don’t have to judge anyone for drinking.
You also don’t have to stay.
Sometimes that’s simply your cue to grab your coat, drive home, wash your face and get into bed knowing you’re going to wake up feeling completely normal.
Which, it turns out, is pretty fucking glorious.
Your Holidays Don’t Have to Become Boring
I think this was one of my biggest fears.
If I took alcohol away, would everything become less fun?
Would celebrations feel less celebratory?
Would Christmas lose some of its magic?
Would New Year’s Eve basically become me watching Anderson Cooper in pajamas until I could reasonably go to bed?
Maybe.
But honestly, that sounds kind of great now.
What surprised me was how much of the holiday experience remained.
The food still tasted good.
The music was still good.
My people were still my people.
Christmas lights still looked pretty.
I still laughed.
I still celebrated.
I still stayed up late sometimes.
And I started remembering the whole thing.
Alcohol wasn’t actually creating the holiday.
It was just something I’d gotten used to having there.
Want a Little Backup This Holiday Season?
I put together a free Holiday Survival Guide for the Sober Curious for exactly this reason.
It’s for the woman who isn’t necessarily interested in declaring herself sober forever but would really like to get through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s or one random work party without spending the entire time thinking about alcohol.
Inside you’ll find simple scripts for turning down drinks, ideas for making alcohol-free celebrations still feel special, ways to handle uncomfortable moments and reminders for when your brain starts telling you everyone else is having more fun.
No labels required.
No forever decision required.
Just a little backup.
Create New Holiday Rituals Instead of Only Removing Old Ones
One of the most useful things I learned about becoming alcohol-free was that taking something away leaves a hole.
And holes have a way of making themselves known.
So instead of only thinking:
I can’t drink wine while I wrap presents anymore.
Ask:
What do I want this ritual to be now?
Make an absurdly elaborate mocktail.
Buy the fancy coffee.
Put on the same Christmas movie every year.
Go look at lights.
Take a walk after Thanksgiving dinner or run a 5k before.
Host brunch.
Make something.
Bake something.
Go to bed early and wake up before everyone else.
Start a tradition that has absolutely nothing to do with alcohol.
You aren’t required to recreate your old holidays minus one ingredient.
You get to make new ones.
Don’t Turn Not Drinking Into Another Way to Be Perfect
This is important.
You do not need to become the poster child for wellness because you stopped drinking.
You don’t need to exercise every morning.
You don’t need to eat perfectly.
You don’t need to meditate.
You don’t need to lose weight.
You don’t need to become wildly productive because you’re no longer hungover.
Sometimes success is eating fourteen Christmas cookies and going to bed at 8:47 without drinking. (Ask me how I know LOL)
Great.
Count it.
Especially in the beginning, I found it helpful to remember what I was actually trying to do.
I wasn’t trying to become the world’s healthiest woman.
I was trying to find out what my life felt like without alcohol.
Those are two very different projects.
You Don’t Have to Decide Forever
This might be the most important thing I can tell you.
You don’t have to use your first alcohol-free Christmas to determine what you’re going to do for every Christmas for the rest of your life.
You don’t have to decide what you’ll do at your daughter’s future wedding.
You don’t need a plan for your imaginary trip to Italy.
You don’t even have to know what you’re doing next summer.
You can just do this holiday.
Or this party.
Or tonight.
My first real experiment with not drinking was 90 days.
I finished those 90 days.
And then I drank again.
Eventually, I quit for good. Five years later, I wrote about what alcohol-free life actually gave me.
For a long time, I thought going back to drinking meant those first 90 days hadn’t worked.
Now I see them completely differently.
They gave me evidence.
I knew what my life felt like without alcohol in it.
I knew I could do hard things without drinking.
I knew I could celebrate without drinking.
I knew I could go to dinner without drinking.
I knew I could survive an awkward party.
I knew I could wake up on January 1 without wondering what the hell happened the night before.
I couldn’t unknow any of that.
What If This Isn’t Just About the Holidays?
Maybe you found this article because you wanted to survive one alcohol-free holiday party.
Great.
Start there.
But maybe somewhere along the way you start wondering:
What if I kept going?
Not forever.
Just long enough to find out.
That’s why I created The First 90 Days Alcohol-Free, and why I wrote about [what my first 30, 60 and 90 days without alcohol actually looked like].
Because I spent way too much time asking:
Is my drinking bad enough that I need to quit?
Eventually, I found a much more useful question:
Is alcohol making my life better?
You don’t need to know the answer before the holidays.
You don’t need to know it on January 1.
You can just start paying attention.
See how you sleep.
See how you feel.
See what’s hard.
See what gets easier.
See whether the thing you were so afraid of giving up was actually giving you as much as you thought it was.
And then decide what you want to do with what you learn.
In the meantime?
Bring the good drink.
Use the pretty glass.
Leave when you want to.
Go to bed.
Wake up without a hangover.
And have yourself a very merry little alcohol-free holiday.
Want a little backup this holiday season?
Get my free Alcohol-Free Holiday Survival Guide with simple scripts, alcohol-free drink ideas and practical ways to make the holidays easier without drinking.
