35 Christmas date ideas for couples: cozy nights in, lights and markets, festive food, gift dates, and ideas for when you're apart for the holidays.
Riley Tonkin
Founder, Amora
The best Christmas dates are small traditions you can repeat every year. Try a light walk with hot chocolate, decorating the tree with a playlist, a holiday movie marathon, a gingerbread contest or a Secret Santa for two. If you're apart for the holidays, open gifts on a video call and watch the same Christmas film in sync. Most of these 35 ideas cost little or nothing.
December fills up fast: work parties, family visits, shopping lists. A Christmas date is how you keep a little of the season for the two of you, and the best ones turn into traditions you look forward to every year.
Plenty of couples spend the holidays in different places, with different families or in different countries. These still feel like a Christmas date.
For more ideas for nights apart, try these 50 long distance date ideas.
For more, see these winter date ideas and 25 date night ideas at home.
The holidays are busy, and the small daily things are what keep you close through them: one good question, answered by both of you. That is what Amora does every day, including the days you spend with different families.
What ten seconds of us would you replay if you could?
Decorate the tree with a playlist, have a holiday movie marathon, do a gingerbread house contest, bake cookies, wrap gifts side by side or make an ornament for each year you've been together.
A walk to see the lights with a flask of hot chocolate, a Christmas market with a small budget, cookie decorating, a memory jar, or writing cards together. Most cost almost nothing.
Pick one ritual and repeat it every year: the same dinner, the same film, the same walk, or reading a memory jar of your favorite moments from the year.
Open gifts together on a video call, watch the same Christmas film in sync, cook the same dish on video, or start Christmas morning with a call before the family day begins.
Riley is the founder of Amora. He built the app after experiencing the challenges of staying connected in his own long-distance relationship, and reviews relationship psychology research from Dr. John Gottman, Dr. Sue Johnson, and others to inform every guide and question on the site.
