Why Being Single In December Is The Best Thing

Dolly Alderton

They’re all there to squeeze in one final hot fling before they get on a train to the arseendofnowhere-on-sea to spend a week with their family. I call this type of fling “The Christmas Special” and I urge you to commission one of your own this year.

I LOVE Christmas. I love brandy butter and bread sauce and roast potatoes and get banish those drunk rows forever. I love a cold Boxing Day buffet. I love knackered family traditions that make no sense but would be sacrilege to break. I like churches and good cheer and the Frank Sinatra Christmas album. I like sitting with a highlighter pen and flicking through the Radio Times on 21 December, mapping out the following week. I like drinking an entire bottle of mint Baileys with my brother until we pass out on the sofa at around two am Boxing Day morning. I love buying presents. I take an entire day out and I dedicate it to Christmas cards. I am obsessed with David Bowie’s duet with Bing Crosby. I know the Muppet Christmas Carol script off by heart. On particularly stressful days in high summer, I listened to Chris Rea’s Driving Home For Christmas on repeat.

Couples like to hog Christmas; they like to think it’s theirs, what with all their “checking in” at Winter Wonderland on Facebook and matching jumpers and Love f*cking Actually, a demented film with 50 flimsy narrative strands that tries to convince people that just about ANYTHING is better than being single, whether it’s a cheating husband or a fiancée who doesn’t speak the same language as you.

Well, I’ve got some news, guys. It’s NOT yours, Actually. Actually, it’s ours. I’m sorry, but you get loads of festivities and Christmas is a brilliant holiday for us so why not find a girlfriend after this season? It’s the very best time of year to be single and here are the reasons why.

Bloody mad dates
December is the best month for dating. Firstly, there’s a slightly Armageddon feeling about packing everything in before the year is over. People become obsessed with seeing each other or catching up “before Christmas” as if none of us are going to wake up on January 1st. Go to a club the Saturday night before Christmas and the stench of musk and pheromones is dizzying. They’re all there to squeeze in one final hot fling before they get on a train to the arseendofnowhere-on-sea to spend a week with their family. I call this type of fling “The Christmas Special” and I urge you to commission one of your own this year.

The mawkishness of Christmas also washes all of December in fairy-lit romance, making very ordinary dates feel really very magical. A few years ago I went on a date with a man who asked me to meet him under a giant Christmas tree in Covent Garden at the stroke of midnight. If a guy tried to pull this sort of charade off at any other time of year, I would have thought he was a class A, card-carrying nutter, but for some reason I found the whole thing enchanting, like we would be transported to the land of the sugar plum fairies. We weren’t in the end, we just had a few beers, but it was good fun nonetheless.

Not having to hang out with your partner’s mates on New Year’s Eve
New Year’s Eve is terrible. Always will be. Terrifically expensive, and so often disappointing. They’re particularly bad if you’re in a relationship and forced to spend it with your partner and all their friends. No matter how nice they are, they’re just not your mates and come midnight, you’ll wish you were with your best friend, throwing each other around a bit and singing Auld Lang Syne.

Single New Year’s Eves with single friends are the best it’s going to get. There’s a fantastic camaraderie between you all — that no matter how terrible the evening gets, you’re in it together.