We love holiday parties, but we don’t always love drinking. Sometimes we have to work in the morning, or we have to drive home, or maybe we drank too much the night before and we’d just like to unwind responsibly with a little bit of cannabis. For those occasions, we’ve scoured the Internet’s most comprehensive lists of mocktails, and we’re bringing you our holiday favorites.
Some of these are borderline healthy, and you can share all of them with your kids. Which will either demonstrate to them that a good time can be had without alcohol, or prime them to enjoy the harder stuff once they leave for college.
Hot Drinks
As we get back into the routine of work and regular life it’s still nice to spend some quality family time together cupping warm mugs of spiced, but not spiked, beverages. These hot buocktails go great with game night.
- Whenever we’re in Seattle we get a big paper cup of Hot Buttered Rum cider from the market and share it between the three of us. We’re not sure if this is the same recipe, but we can’t imagine the holidays without the warm and cozy feeling of a giant mug (or paper cup) of family tradition.
- Because cranberries make everything seem extra special Decemberish, Bustle has instructions for a kick-ass Cranberry Apple Cider that can be served hot or cold.
Some Classics
It ain’t the New Year yet! Let’s get crazy, and promise ourselves that in 2017 we’re really going to get our shit together. Still, we can cut back on our drinking early with these substitutes for classic cocktails.
- Holiday Mojito! This recipe calls for 7-up, which we like to replace with something that has the citrus, but not the high-fructose corn syrup. The lime, cranberry and mint combination in a tall, red-sugar lined glass looks so festive on the serving tray.
- Moscow Mule. We don’t have a link for this one. Copper mug. Ginger beer, lime, and you can add club soda, but you don’t have to. Really, is there a better drink to celebrate the end of 2016? Because Moscow?
Fancy Drinks for Fancy Glasses
We know 2016 wasn’t the best year. We lost a lot of great people. But Splimm is still here, and we know there are so many things worth celebrating for 2017. So we’re breaking out the highball kit, reading some J.D. Salinger short stories, and promising to make 2017 as classy as possible:
- Frost Bite from the Little Kitchen. You can use whatever kind of fizzy water you like though. There are endless possible variations for this drink. We couldn’t find the soda at our local grocery, so we combined limeade with Italian grapefruit soda.
- Blackberry Mocktails. It’s made with berries, so that means it’s healthy!
