Households are to "limit" contact with others, Nicola Sturgeon has said.
The First Minister said guidelines would be issued to "make Christmas safer" amid the rise in Omicron variant cases.
But she insisted celebrations on December 25 would not be "cancelled" amid fears of further restrictions across Scotland.
It comes as shops, supermarkets and businesses will have to re-introduce social distancing protections and limit the number of people in their stores under new guidance announced today.
Ms Sturgeon told MSPs that the Scottish Government will change regulations to make it a legal requirement for businesses providing services to take measures to reduce transmission.
The move could see queuing return outside many shops.
Ms Sturgeon said the exact guidance would be issued later this week for different sectors.
Two-metre distancing guidelines that limit the number of customers in shops are among the rules set to return.
The First Minister said: “For example in retail, it will involve a return to the kind of protections in place at the start of the pandemic – for example, measures to avoid crowding and bottlenecks.
This will include physical distancing, measures to control the flow of customers and protective screens.”
The First Minister also said that guidance recommending businesses enable staff to work from home where possible would again become a legal duty.
She said: “I am hugely grateful to employers who are already allowing staff to work at home where possible, but we are not yet maximising the impact of home working to reduce the overall number of contacts we are having.”
In terms of today's Covid numbers, a further 3,117 new cases have been diagnosed within the last 24 hours across Scotland.
Another six people have died which takes the nation's death toll to 9,725 although 12,216 deaths have been registered with Covid on the death certificate.
There are 541 patients being treated for Covid in Scottish hospitals with 38 people in intensive care units. Over 2.2 million people have received a booster jab.
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