7 Creative New Year’s Traditions for Christian Singles

2. Post-Christmas Clean-Up Party

A lot of people get January 1st off from work, so they use that day to pull down the tree, take down decorations, and generally clean up after the holidays. They have leftovers to use up - whether they cooked a huge turkey or mom and dad sent them home with more than they can eat. They also have friends in the same single boat.

Each year, get all of your friends together and take turns going to one of their houses to help with deconstruction: re-packaging ornaments, sorting recycling, vacuuming up pine needles, and winding up tree lights. When your home is clean-up central, you feed the crew and brew the coffee.

Let the party meal be the strangest melange of foods possible, combined from whatever is left. Create a new casserole or just put out whatever there is, as is, adding a tossed salad for balance. After your gear is cleaned up, sit around, full and tired, talking about the holidays and about your goals for the new year. 

“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” - Hebrews 13:16

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3. Revisit Service Goals

Use this time each January 1st to reassess every facet of service in which you are involved. Do you enjoy it? If not, is this because you are serving in the wrong place or because your heart is hard? Perhaps you are over-committed, and you could cut something out - will it be your solitary walks each morning, a sporting engagement, or a volunteer commitment?

Maybe you have the opposite problem, and you want some direction as to where you should start. Or you like to help in one-off ways where you can avoid getting truly involved. Ask yourself hard questions, not to guilt yourself into doing more, but to let God speak into your heart. Paul Tripp writes, “God knows your way. He knows everything about you. He knows everything you’ll face today. He knows everything you’re thinking, everything you’re struggling with. And he says, “You come to me. You meditate in my Word. You listen to my counsel. I want you to thrive.”

And if you decide to make changes, set out the reasons clearly. Let it be for the glory of God and to follow his commands out of love, not out of duty and fear. Psalm 37:4 says that God wants us to delight in him, to want a heart like Jesus’ heart, that wants to glorify God by serving others.

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4. Finish One Book

Some of you will say “why stop at one?” Others will remember the three or four unfinished works on your shelves: tomes of Bible interpretation, commentaries about the Gospels, or biographies of famous Christians from the Apostle Paul to Billy Graham.

Life is such a rush much of the time, so give yourself permission to sit with your feet up, a cup of tea at your elbow, and a bowl of chopped carrots and apples (a break from the rich stuff of holidays). Read without pressure to be somewhere or do anything. Regard this time as a gift to yourself, and either finish what you started or begin again to get the flow you lost when you tried to read three pages at a time before falling asleep.

Some classics you might have longed to finish (or start) include Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, any commentary by Matthew Henry, and The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. More recent classics include Instruments In The Redeemer’s Hands by Paul David Tripp, Prodigal God by Tim Keller and Shame Interrupted by Ed Welch. What do you want to understand better about God? Is there a specific challenge you are dealing with or a Book of the Bible you are especially curious about? Make good use of your rest time and start a new tradition.

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5. Mobile New Year’s Eve Party

One temptation at New Year’s is to stay home, eat too much, and drink too much. Christians are not immune to this temptation, and it can be helpful to find some way to avoid that. If the sidewalks are not too icy on New Year’s Eve, get all of your portable lights together and go for a walk with one or more friends. Invite neighbors. Make it a purposeful walk, one where you can expect people to stop and ask, “What are you doing?” Bring extra lights with you in case someone wants to join.

The idea is two-fold - find some way to celebrate New Year’s Eve without doing typical party things that your contemporaries are getting up to, and engage in potential outreach. Since this is a difficult time of year for many people who are either depressed or pressured by their peers or by a personal addiction, you could be surprised at how this idea catches on.

What sorts of lights can you take with you? There are several varieties, and they can be colorful or just bright. Consider flashlights, headlamps, single-use glow sticks, and similar accessories for wearing around your neck, wrists, and ankles, even battery-operated camping lanterns. And with the numerous colored bulbs out there, you might even manage to switch out plain white lights for blue, red, or purple.

Be ready: when someone asks, tell them why you are so interested in bringing light into the streets. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Expect people from your subdivision to knock on your door next year asking “when is the light parade happening?”

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6. Start a Chain Letter Story

Pick a number of friends whom you want to involve in a month-long, or even year-long, story-writing saga. Find a 3-prong folder and fill it with blank pages. Give the outside cover a title: “Our Story, 2025”, or be more creative. On the back page, mark a list of participants and ask everyone to pass the story along in that order, cycling back to you once they reach the bottom of the list. Now, write a single line on the first page. Place the duotang in an envelope and deliver or mail it to number one on the list.

God is a story-writer. Andrew Shanks asks, “Ought it surprise us when the divine storyteller enters into his story? What else could he do? What else would we expect from him? For this world is the story that God is telling: it is the revelation of his very being.” We try to follow the Lord’s lead in everything so we can confidently say, “No wonder we like to be creative - our God is creative, too!” Those of us who love to write stories, perform music, or paint get our calling from our Creator.

Maybe a story is not the thing for you; perhaps it is a mural, a collage, or a sketch. Start with a shape, then invite an artistic friend to add it, and then go back and forth to build this picture. Decide on a date when the exchange will end (January 31st? or December 31st?), and every year, see where your efforts at collective artistry brought you. Explore areas of artistic growth. Talk about the themes that emerged and where you think they came from. Look for clues that the Lord has been at work, helping you to become wiser, more observant, and more compassionate. These motifs will emerge in your written or visual work.

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7. Honor Ends and Beginnings

The New Year is a time to ring in another 12 months of the Lord’s provision, Sovereignty, love, and presence. December 31st is also a night to remember that some sagas are over. Look back over the year and remember what ended - a long-standing debt, a marriage, a friendship, or a battle with disease. Did you retire or get a diagnosis that ended your version of “normal”?

Consider beginnings in light of these endings. What will divorce mean for you - a long legal battle or freedom from oppression? Has retirement opened up opportunities to travel? Do you long to try new adventures since medical treatments ceased? How will you plan for weekends and holidays now that you have been diagnosed with a new condition that limits you in certain ways?

Mark these endings and beginnings in a special journal you take out only on December 31st. Write down prayers, and leave space beneath your entry to record how the Lord has answered you, whether with his “yes,” his “no,” or with “just wait, I have something planned.”

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) With timing in his hands, and eternity on his mind, no wonder the Lord can seem to take a long time to change your situation. When you bring out the journal every year, re-read the prayers you wrote down and mark his answers. We often see God’s power by reviewing what has passed over a long period of time. This is when we realize that he really WAS busy in our lives when we were not looking.

As a single Christian man or woman, so many social practices at New Year seem like a bad idea or feel like they were made for couples, so make your own. You are not alone. Not everyone wants to party, even though they feel pressured to do so. The question for single Christians is always, “Can I honor God best by reveling or resting?” Your challenge, Christian single, is to not succumb to excess or self-pity. With the Holy Spirit’s help, you can come up with a tradition that is genuinely enjoyable, something you will look forward to if you are still single 12 months from now.

Sources:
https://www.paultripp.com/psalms/posts/psalm-1-god-wants-you-to-thrive
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-is-the-author-who-enters-his-story/
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This article originally appeared on Christianity.com. For more faith-building resources, visit Christianity.com.