The holidays are often a stressful time. Buying presents, making plans, deciding what excuse you’re going to use to get out of each party you’ve been invited to, and a plethora of other obligations make this one of the most stressful times of the year. With everything going on, it’s easy to want to go inside and stay inside, just enjoying the coziest time of year at home with your pets and hot chocolate.

While this is super tempting, it is also beyond important to actually get out and spend time with your family, especially those you don’t get to see throughout the year. Besides the fact that it’s just good in general to be with your family, there are tons of benefits to being social during the Christmas season. Here are the 5 reasons why it’s important to spend time with your family this winter:

1. Humans are Made to be Social

Trust me, introverted friends, I know how bad it sucks to be social, but that’s actually how humans are made. Even if you have anxiety about being social in general, being around family and other familiar faces can actually make you feel a lot better than you thought.

2. Life is Short

I know that this isn’t something that people usually want to think about during the holidays, but life is short and you never know when your last day with someone may be. You never know what is going to happen throughout the year and it’s always important to spend whatever time you can with the people you love.

3. The Food is Better

You’re lying to yourself if you think the food you make on your own is better than the holiday food our grandmother or aunt or even cousins can make. It’s like a law of the holidays: food always tastes better when your relatives make it.

4. More Presents

This one is obvious. The more people you see on Christmas, the more people are going to get you presents and the more cute gifts you get to give out yourself. One of my favorite things to do on Christmas is to wrap and give out presents, so this is a win-win!

5. More Love to go Around

The main reason it’s good to spend time with your family this holiday season is that they love you and you love them back. Family is forever and no matter what you do or don’t do, it’s always important to spend time with the people you care about that will always care about you. I know that sometimes it’s hard to see, but our family is always our biggest supporter and we should always be grateful for that and spend as much time with them as we can.