60 Christmas Date Ideas for Couples

December has a strange effect on couples. There is more going on than any other month of the year, and somehow less time to do any of it together. The calendar fills with other people’s parties, family obligations, and the logistics of gifts, and the two of you end up doing the festive season in parallel rather than together.

The fix is not elaborate. It’s picking two or three things and actually putting them in the diary before the month gets eaten. Almost everything below is better booked in November than decided on a Tuesday in December, because the good ones sell out and the free ones need daylight.

Sorted by the kind of evening you want, including the ones that cost nothing.

Classic Christmas dates

The ones that work every year for a reason. If you only do three things this December, take them from here.

1. Walk a Christmas market with no shopping list and one rule: you each buy the other something under fifteen dollars.
2. Go ice skating, badly, and commit to the full hour rather than leaving when your ankles complain.
3. Drive or walk a Christmas lights route with a flask of something hot.
4. Visit a Christmas tree farm and cut your own, even if the tree is objectively worse than a lot tree.
5. See a seasonal production — a carol concert, The Nutcracker, a pantomime, a local choir.
6. Book a table somewhere with a proper fire and no intention of leaving early.
7. Do a hot chocolate crawl: three places, one small cup each, rank them seriously.
8. Go to a carol service, whatever you do or don’t believe. The singing is the point.
9. Take a horse-drawn carriage ride if your city does them and you can be unironic about it.
10. Visit a department store window display after dark, when the crowds have thinned.
11. Find a Christmas market you have to travel to and make the journey part of the date.
12. Go to a tree-lighting event and stay for the bit after everyone leaves.

Cozy Christmas dates at home

The best December dates are frequently the ones where you never put shoes on. These need no booking and no weather.

13. Decorate the tree together with a rule that both of your terrible ornaments go on the front.
14. Bake and decorate Christmas cookies, then judge each other’s work harshly.
15. Build a gingerbread house and accept that it will collapse.
16. Do a Christmas film marathon in a fixed order you argue about beforehand.
17. Cook a full Christmas dinner on an ordinary weeknight in December, just for the two of you.
18. Wrap all the presents together with a good playlist and a drink.
19. Write cards side by side, which is dull alone and oddly nice as a pair.
20. Make mulled wine from scratch and get militant about the spice ratio.
21. Have a pajamas-and-cheeseboard night with the tree lights as the only lighting.
22. Do a blind taste test of supermarket mince pies or festive chocolates.
23. Build a fort in the living room. You are never too old and it is free.
24. Read to each other — a Christmas story, a chapter each, out loud.

Free and cheap Christmas dates

December is expensive enough. None of these cost more than a coffee, and most cost nothing at all.

25. Walk your own neighborhood after dark and rate the decorations out of ten.
26. Go to a free late-night museum or gallery opening, which many cities run in December.
27. Window shop with a strict no-buying rule and pick what you’d get with unlimited money.
28. Watch the same Christmas film you watch every year, again.
29. Volunteer together for an afternoon — a food bank, a shelter, a wrapping station.
30. Take a winter walk somewhere with a view and time it for sunset, which comes conveniently early.
31. Make decorations rather than buying them, badly, from whatever’s in the house.
32. Do a photo walk with your phones and print the best one.
33. Have a games night with whatever’s already in the cupboard.
34. Drive to the edge of town where it’s dark enough to see stars.

Christmas dates for adults

Less tinsel, more evening. For couples who want the season without the whole Hallmark apparatus.

35. Book a tasting menu somewhere you’d never usually go and treat it as the December event.
36. Do a whisky, gin, or mulled-wine tasting flight at a decent bar.
37. Get a couples spa afternoon in the dead space between Christmas and New Year.
38. Go to a jazz or blues night rather than anything with sleigh bells in it.
39. Book one night in a hotel in your own city and behave like tourists.
40. Take a cooking class focused on something festive — pastry, game, a showpiece dessert.
41. Find a candlelit classical concert in a church, which most cities run through December.
42. Do a proper long lunch on a weekday you’ve both booked off.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dates

The two days themselves are usually family territory. These are the pockets of time that are still yours.

43. Claim Christmas Eve morning before anything starts — breakfast out, just the two of you.
44. Do your own private gift exchange on Christmas Eve rather than in front of everyone.
45. Go to a midnight service, or just walk somewhere quiet at midnight.
46. Take the dog, or nobody, on a Christmas morning walk before the house wakes up.
47. Cook the Christmas morning breakfast together as a two-person job.
48. Take a deliberate walk after the main meal to get out of the house and talk.
49. Stay up after everyone else has gone to bed with the leftovers and the tree lights.
50. Book Boxing Day, or the 26th, as a do-nothing day with no visitors and no plans.

Festive dates for the run-up

The four weekends before Christmas fill up fast. Claim one of them now, before someone else does.

51. Do a December bucket list on the first of the month and put dates against each item.
52. Have an advent date: something small on a set day each week, however minor.
53. Go to a craft fair and buy every gift in one afternoon.
54. Take a festive train or bus route somewhere and come straight back.
55. Do a themed dinner from a Christmas tradition neither of you grew up with.
56. Book a wreath-making or ornament workshop — most florists run them from late November.
57. Have a New Year planning night in mid-December, before the year runs out of road.
58. Do a charity shop gift challenge with a strict budget and a time limit.
59. Go to a winter fairground or ice rink pop-up while it’s still novel.
60. Take the photo you never take — one decent picture of the two of you, this year.

How to make December actually happen

The gap between wanting a good December and having one is almost entirely about booking. Three things:

• Put two dates in the calendar in November. Not "we should do something festive" — two actual dates with times. The month fills up with other people’s plans by the end of the first week.
• Pick one that costs nothing. December gets expensive, and a lights walk with a flask is genuinely as good as the tasting menu.
• Protect one evening after the 25th. The stretch between Christmas and New Year is the quietest, cheapest, least-contested time of the entire year, and almost nobody plans anything for it.

If the run-up leaves you flat rather than festive, our winter date ideas cover January onward, when the decorations are down and the evenings are still dark. For the cheap end year-round there’s cheap date ideas, and at-home date night ideas for the nights nobody wants to go outside. If you want something to talk about over the long dinner, take conversation starters for couples with you.