If you’re like me, the second Thanksgiving dinner is over, your favorite holiday has gone into full swing. Satin bows, garland, and an overabundance of red and green makes everything ten times merrier! Wearing comfy sweaters, gloves, and holding piping hot hot chocolate while admiring millions of twinkling lights is your favorite pastime in the colder months.

You don’t stop there, though! If your Christmas song comes on, you dance. You don’t care if you’re between the aisles of a grocery store or sitting at a red light, you jam out to that thing (David Foster’s Carol of The Bells is life by the way. I danced to it in an antique store just last week. No shame.)

Who doesn’t love a good Christmas light show timed to music?

You have your Christmas list done in July in anticipation and constantly update it until your mom asks you for it. You also know exactly how to wrap a present and enjoy not only receiving gifts, but giving them in return, just as much or even more!

Decorating the house is a holiday tradition that you make sure you help your family do, or even just do yourself! You even like helping other people pick out presents and your overall mood is so much happier when there’s snow on the ground and you’re cuddled up inside, next to a fire.

This is because Christmas isn’t just a holiday to you. It’s a season. It’s an event that you have to prepare for, where you strategically plan out all of the things you have to do, things you have to buy, and food you have to eat to make it the best Christmas yet!

But alas, Christmas has come and gone. You stare at the empty place under the tree, wishing presents were still there. Christmas is essentially both the happiest and saddest day of the year for you, because it means the holiday season has come to a close. Things just aren't the same after Christmas.

If it snowed, it’s not that pretty, fluffy white snow anymore. It’s a slush of mud and sadness that gets caked onto your wheels and the underside of your car.

Those decorations you put up? You now have to take them all down, somehow manage to cram them back into their boxes (which they never seem to go in as well as they were packed the first time), and shove those boxes into a corner of the attic for next year.

And don't get me started on coming up with New Year's resolutions! They just become a bunch of fake promises you tell yourself you're going to go through with, only to push it off to next year or forget about completely.

Not to mention with the new year comes the terrible feat of remembering what year to put on your papers. (Heck, I'm still scratching out 14s on my dates, how am I supposed to remember to write a 16 now??)

You catch yourself counting down the days already... the hours... the minutes…

Chant it with me: “31,363,200 seconds until Christmas”

But hey, it's not all bad. Take the time that's left of this year to count your blessings and appreciate everything that was given to you on Christmas as well as throughout the rest of the year! People may have come into your life or some maybe left. You may have started a new job, a hobby, a new school, or something else exciting, or maybe something that you wish you could forget happened. Whatever that is, take this time to internalize all that's happened around you, and appreciate it for who it made you today. Take the time to recognize how great the holidays and this past year were, and get ready for 2016!

I know it's going to be a good one, I can feel it!