Sweary Christmas Coloring Pages for the Grown-Ups Doing All the Work

Disclaimer: these colouring page designs are *actually* sweary. i.e. if your nan reads this blog, send her to one of my regular Christmas colouring pages instead and we’ll say no more about it.

Somewhere around mid-December, the festive spirit quietly packs its bags and leaves.

Maybe it’s the twentieth “quick catch-up before Christmas” you’ve agreed to. Maybe it’s the group chat trying to organise Secret Santa with a fifty cent budget and eleven different opinions. Maybe it’s the moment you open the box of Christmas lights you packed away so carefully last January and find yourself trying to untangle them 4 hours later…

Low Key Xmas Mindfulness

If you’re like me – you still love Christmas. Mostly. You’d just like to love it from the couch, with a drink, for ten uninterrupted minutes, without anyone asking where the sticky tape went.

That’s what these are for.

Here are a handful of free sweary Christmas colouring pages for the grown-ups doing all the work this season: the present buyers, the list makers, the people hosting lunch for relatives who will absolutely be late. From across the room they look perfectly festive. Up close, they say exactly what you’re thinking.

Why swearing and coloring work so well together

The rude pages are always the most popular ones on my site and I don’t think that’s an accident!

Colouring in gives your hands something slow and repetitive to do, which is about the closest most of us get to switching off in the silly season. Including swearing is like adding a release valve. There’s something deeply satisfying about spending twenty careful minutes shading the word “fuck” in a tasteful festive red.

There’s even a bit of science on your side. Researchers at Keele University found that people who swore could keep their hand in icy water for longer than people who used a neutral word. Nobody has tested it on Christmas shopping centres yet, but after using them profusely during childbirth, I have my suspicions.

What’s in this christmassy coloring collection

• Snow Fucks Given, a snowman in a snow globe who is done
• It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fuck This, big lettering with lights and snowflakes
• Dear Santa, This Year I’ve Been a Goddamn Delight, a letter to the big man himself
• Season’s Greetings, a lovely wreath with one small change

Each one is a free printable PDF. Print on plain paper for colouring, or on cardstock if you’re planning to gift one to a friend or foe (more on that at the end).

And if four isn’t going to get you through December, there’s a whole book of them on Etsy. I’ll show you that after the free ones.

Click on each image to download or print PDF colouring page.

1. Snow Fucks Given

This little guy has been shaken one too many times this year. He’s trapped in his snow globe, snow swirling around him, and he is giving the world both middle fingers with absolute conviction.

He’s the one to colour when you’ve hit your limit and need a mascot. When it comes to colour palette – the world is your oyster – go classic with icy blues and silver, or ignore realism entirely and make it a pink and gold blizzard. Make his scarf your least favourite relative’s footy colours if you’re feeling petty.

3. Dear Santa, This Year I’ve Been a Goddamn Delight

A handwritten note to Santa, sitting on a desk surrounded by all the Christmas bits and pieces that pile up come December.

This is the page for anyone who has held it together all year and would like that formally noted on the record. It’s a slower, more detailed one to colour, so save it for a proper sit-down. Small colourful objects scattered around plain paper look great, so go bright on the bits and leave the letter itself pale.

4. Unfiltered Seasons Greetings

A beautiful Christmas wreath with a big festive bow. Festive foliage, everything you’d expect. And right in the middle, where the candle should be, a middle finger standing proudly to attention.

This is the sneakiest page in the set. From a distance it’s a lovely traditional wreath that could hang in any hallway. Up close, it’s a greeting of a different kind. Colour the wreath in proper deep greens and berry reds so it looks as respectable as possible, because the contrast is the whole joke. It’s also the one people most like to frame.

Want the whole book?

These four are a taste of Festive AF, my full sweary Christmas colouring book on Etsy. It has 16 pages of festive rudeness, all hand drawn, including even more grown up versions of your festive faves.

It’s an instant digital download, so you can print it tonight, and print it again next year. It also makes a very good Secret Santa gift (if I do say so myself) for the friend/brother/sister/uncle who would genuinely laugh, tucked in with a bottle of wine and some decent pencils.

Six ways to use sweary Christmas colouring pages (that aren’t just colouring them)

1. Make a card for your work bestie. Print Season’s Greetings on cardstock, colour it, fold it in half. Chances are it’s the only card they’ll actually keep.

2. Start a Christmas night colouring session. Once the kids are asleep and the dishes are someone else’s problem, hand out pages and pencils to the adults. It is a lot calmer than charades.

3. Add one to a Secret Santa gift. Roll a coloured page up with a ribbon and tuck it in next to a bottle of something. It turns a thirty-dollar present into a forty-dollar one, for the cost of some printer ink.

4. Frame the wreath. Season’s Greetings passes for respectable decor from about two metres away. Hang it where only the right people will get close enough to notice.

5. Keep one in your bag for the in-laws. For when you need ten quiet minutes in the spare room. No one questions someone who looks this focused.

6. Colour it badly on purpose. Nobody’s grading it. Scribble outside the lines, use the wrong colours, and give the snowman purple eyebrows. December has enough rules already.

A few quick printing tips

• Print at 100% or “actual size” so the edges don’t get cut off.
• Cardstock works best for markers and for gifting; plain printer paper is fine for pencils.
• Print a couple of spares. Someone at Christmas lunch will want one, I promise.

More pages for when you’ve had enough

If these got a laugh, you’ll like my free swear word colouring pages, with plenty more rudeness for the rest of the year. For non-festive burnout there are the sweary pages for when you’re over it including a toaster having a worse day than you. And if you need something your nan can colour too, the regular Christmas colouring pages are much better behaved.

Merry Christmas. Or whatever. You’ve earned it.