A joyful Christmas - Alcohol free

[Hotchocolatesforeveryone]

Hi everyone

I thought I would create a thread specifically for getting through the Christmas Period - alcohol free and really hoping some others join me!

I am currently on day 1 (for about the 10th time this year) but I did complete Dry January, and had a lot of long periods alcohol free after but sadly fell into bad habits again during 1st lockdown and all through summer. But I've been quite good recently, only drinking at weekends - but I've decided that I just want a joyful happy life and alcohol, even in smaller quantities, brings nothing valuable to my life and makes me nothing but miserable.

So anyway. I'm going to use this thread to keep myself in check, as I said specifically through the christmas period.

I'm hoping (if anyone joins) we can share delicious alcohol free drinks we've discovered. Tips to stay off the booze. Share things that doesn't involve alcohol but that brings us joy through the festivities.

I plan to get every type of hot chocolate/coffee i can get my hands on go for lots of winter walks, read lots of books (finally without having to close one eye to focus on the words after one too many glasses of wine) and I plan to learn to bake some Christmas treats with my kids. We plan to build a ginger bread house on Saturday night and I'm really looking forward to that!

Anyway hopefully some others decide to join no matter what day they are on! So day1 here we go!

Happy Saturday everyone! How are we all? Christmas is starting to look very close. I dreamt that I accidentally drank three glasses of mulled wine followed by three g&ts before remembering that I don’t drink any more. That was a relief to wake up. I am going to make sure that I have plenty of soft drinks to choose from. The bottle of Wilfred’s that I bought is very nice, especially with ginger beer. The sloe and juniper cordial is lovely with sparkling water. I shall try out soda water with cordials next, looking for something lovely to have in a champagne flute on Christmas Day morning instead of a Buck’s Fizz. I did buy an m&s alcohol free Bucks Fizz, then made the mistake of reading both the label and the single review on Ocado. Oops.