Let me start with a disclaimer, this is mostly my own experience, and Christmas is still one of my favorite holidays.

Coming home from college can be a rather melancholy experience, and one would think that the uplifting spirit of the Christmas season might be able to offset that, but they would be wrong. Of course getting to see my family is great, but it puts a real damper on things when everyone in the house has to get up and go to work or school in the morning, and I'm left with endless free time for the entire day.

Myself being a sophomore in college, it puts me at that perfect age where I still have several friends at home who are still in high school as well as a lot of friends who have graduated and started college. This creates a never-ending cycle of schedules never matching up because half of them are still in school and the other half are either not done with finals or are spending time with their family for the holidays.

Christmas should be one of the only times in the year when all of your family and friends from back home are back in the same place, even if for a short time, but it seems that every year when we come home for the holidays everyone ends up missing each other and I get stuck making trips to the grocery store so that I have an excuse to leave my house.

With all that being said, Christmas is still my favorite time of the year. Getting to see the joy on my cousins' faces when they open their presents and spending time with my extended family during the holidays are some of my fondest memories in life. It's also nice to hear some jingly Christmas music when I get to leave my house and go to the grocery store.