(a budgeting uni student’s guide to christmas)
1. invest in fairy lights
Buying lights to elevate your flat or room does not have to be expensive! Some fairy lights cost one pound and can be placed anywhere—around a door frame, on the borders of the floor, around your bed, or even around some art frames. Either way, a lovely warm white hue will give you a huge boost of serotonin when you come home late.
2. make the most of all the london christmas lights and markets
Sure, Winter Wonderland is a given. But have you checked off all the possible Christmas decorations around London? Oxford, Regent, Carnaby streets, Trafalgar Square market, Fortnum & Mason, Harrods, Covent Garden’s hourly snowfall—these are all beautiful and free to look at!
3. have a flatmas
Every university student usually goes home to their family to celebrate Christmas, but why have only one Christmas Day when you can have two?! Invite all your flatmates and mutual friends, make it formal or Christmas jumper mandatory, assign different people for different duties such as cooking turkey and making stuffing. Create a Christmas playlist and you have a Christmas Day 2.0 (uni student version)!
4. plan a secret santa
Buying gifts for all your uni friends can be chaotic and pricy, so the best way to make everyone happy is to create a secret Santa—everybody agrees on a certain budget, everyone gets a gift! You can make it fun by using websites that randomly assign people, and you can make your own wish list. What’s better, if your group consists of couples, you can exclude them from getting each other!
5. bake gingerbread men and watch a christmas film
Christmas means cozy season but it also means exam season. Take a stress-free Sunday off studying with your flatmates, bake together, and decorate your flat by splitting an Amazon basket. If watching a Christmas film, while eating freshly baked Gingerbread men around your cozy, Christmassy lounge doesn’t put you in the Christmas mood, there’s not much that will.