The holidays are a time of year uniquely full of potential for time-wasting. You could choreograph a salacious dance with three of your friends to “Jingle Bell Rock,” but if you’re not Lindsay Lohan in “Mean Girls,” wouldn’t you rather get festive in a more traditional way? If you feel like your holiday season could use a few good shots of merry and a helping of happy, try some of these classic activities.

Idea: Make decorations yourself

Remember the days when you could pin sequins onto a Styrofoam ball and call it art? Reminisce no more — the holidays offer a perfect excuse to embrace your inner kindergartener.

For Thanksgiving, fashion a paper turkey by tracing the outline of your hand on a piece of paper and cutting it out, accessorizing with beak, eyes, etc. Freshmen, try this one at home over Thanksgiving break and watch your parents’ eyes pop out of their heads when you tell them this is what you’ve been learning at Stanford!

The later part of the holiday season has even greater opportunity for arts and crafts of the elementary school variety. Paper (either IHUM or PWR) chains can serve as garland on a tree or around a dorm room, and popcorn strings are easy if you’ve got a needle, thread and the willpower not to eat all the popcorn. You can make a plastic wreath by bending the bottom part of a wire hanger into a circle and tying plain (non-Ziploc) plastic sandwich baggies around it — LOTS of plastic baggies. There is also the Holy Grail of easy Christmas decorations: the paper snowflake, which also fortunately works through January as well, given its generic “winter” quality. You may find cutting snowflakes much easier than it was when you were seven.

Hanging all of your handmade creations is a must. You get extra points if you deck the halls while singing “Deck the Halls,” complete with the correct number of fa’s and la’s.

Secret tip: When making paper snowflakes, don’t just fold a square a few times. Cut out a paper circle first, then fold it and make fearlessly large cuts along the folds.

Idea: Watch seasonal movies

A “Charlie Brown Christmas” overflows with iconic moments, including the beautification of the spindly Christmas tree due to some love and attention from the children. If you’ve never seen it, watch it; if you have, watch it again.

“Elf” features Will Ferrell in a role that, remarkably, does not gain half its humor from the character’s sexism. The movie is a charming story of the incongruity but not impossibility of childlike wonder in modern society. If you’re looking for a truly old-school kid’s movie, the claymation “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” featuring Burl Ives, cannot be beat.

Christmas movies are not all targeted at children, though. “White Christmas,”a classic musical set in the post-war era, bursts with so much singing and dancing talent, you’ll be able to reminisce right along with Grandma and Grandpa at dinner about the good old days of Hollywood. “Love Actually” is a more contemporary choice, with the different love interactions of many interconnected storylines weaving together a desperately real and improbably uplifting tale.

If you don’t feel like a feature-length film, the holidays always have an excess of football to watch at any time: Thanksgiving week has conference championships and Winter Break is packed full of bowl games. There’s nothing to take your mind off grades like kicking back and zoning out in front of the Startup.com Questionably-Themed-Name Bowl Game.

Sitcoms will be in good seasonal form as well. Watch the new episodes for some guaranteed gift-giving and party-related plot twists. You can also re-experience old favorites like the episode of “The Office” in which Michael brings an iPod to the gift swap and sulks at receiving a pot holder from Phyllis (Season 2, Episode 10) or the episode of Friends when Ross inexplicably dresses up as a “Holiday Armadillo” to explain Hanukkah to his son (Season 7, Episode 10).

Idea: Make festive treats

Everyone hates fruitcake, though most people have probably never even tasted one. Don’t attempt it. Some other holiday specialties, though delicious, are best left to the experienced boulanger, the Yule log or buche de Noel being a good example of what to buy rather than bake.

Remember that the trick of making a holiday goodie is to give the most banal things a soupcon of spirit. Replace the chocolate chips in a batch of cookies with red-and-green or blue-and-white M&Ms — or even just throw some food coloring in scrambled eggs before you serve them — but do something.

Secret tip: If you’re genuinely lazy or culinarily challenged, “Stuff face with holiday treats” is a simpler variant of this suggestion.

Idea: Drink holiday beverages

Festive times call for festive measures, and nothing is more appropriate than an appropriate beverage. Throw medical caution to the wind and make real eggnog, complete with risk of salmonella, or else smugly sip the imitation version secure in relative bacterial safety — just be sure to sprinkle cinnamon on top.

Even sunny Stanford gets nippy on winter nights, and the steaming warmth of a winter drink is the perfect antidote to the chills. Hot cocoa stirred with a candy cane is adorably yummy; hot cider also hits the spot whether it is made by boiling real apples and cinnamon sticks or comes from a paper packet of powder.

For those who imbibe, you can turn these tasty drinks into tasty grown-up drinks easily — just add a little brandy, rum and vodka to the eggnog, peppermint Schnapps or Bailey’s to the hot cocoa, and put the hard back in cider (unless you barely even know ‘er, of course). Any of these will taste unbelievably delicious after a long rut of overpriced Cosmos or frat-provided beer.

If you’ve decked out your dorm with paper accents, cooked up some fantastic sugar-based items, and prepared a kettleful of cocoa, it sounds like you’re all ready for the next idea...

Idea: Throw a holiday party

At last, you have somewhere to wear your sweater! In addition to the consumption of food and drink, have some merriment-making activities. Caroling is a fine choice; refer to it as wassailing if you secretly wish you lived in the 18th century. Don’t forget to hang a little mistletoe over the door — it’s a historically established fact that no one standing under a sprig of a parasitical plant will resist succumbing to a smooch.

Idea: Give presents

This self-explanatory part of the holiday season makes even the most diehard atheist retailers rejoice and has a surprisingly important effect on the national economy. Even if you eschew crass commercialism, you can still make a little something for the people who matter in your life to let them know you appreciate them. Don’t forget to wrap them!

Secret tip: Be creative and eco-conscious by using recycled materials to wrap presents. Old copies of Intermission look artsy when wrapped neatly around a box and topped with some ribbon.

Idea: Check out local decorations and events

Both small towns and big cities will have events such as parades or a big Christmas tree lighting — experience the merriment without doing any of the work. Somewhere, two neighbors have taken an innocent Christmas lights rivalry too far; find this place and marvel at the attraction of the lights or, at least, at the sheer wattage being used. Wander through the downtown area of the nearest city and window-shop the most interesting displays. Check the paper for free concerts happening around the holidays. Take your mom and little brother and get points from Santa.

Secret tip: The ubiquity of Christmas displays makes this the easiest idea of the bunch. The real challenge exists in avoiding such displays, which is practically impossible if you leave your house between November 1 and January 8.

Idea: Combine some of the above...

This suggestion comes with a warning: cutting out paper snowflakes while watching “White Christmas” is almost dangerously festive.