When the long-awaited Christmas break is finally here, when you can finally come home from college, when dead week has...well...died, you have a lot to celebrate. From surviving the semester to seeing your home once again, you feel relieved and ready to rejoice during one of the merriest times of the year. You then realize that the greatest gift is this break and can celebrate what your true love (this break) gave to you on the Twelve Days of Christmas.
12 hours of sleeping.
From family members to friends to Secret Santa recipients, at the ebb of the schoolwork tide, the time has finally come to max out your credit card and buy some gifts. Finally, you can immerse yourself in the spirit of giving and spreading holiday cheer, a feeling that you don't experience as much when you're drowning in assignments.
10 pounds of cookies.
The Freshman 15 neither matters nor exists during the holiday season. Dining hall cookies could never surpass your grandmother's gingersnaps nor your friend's sugar cookies. So it's the time of the year to inhale all of the baked goods you have been missing. You can put exercise on the back burner until the spring semester.
9 friends a-dancing.
It's time to happy dance! You and all of your friends have endured a heck of a fall semester and you all can become the Nine Ladies Dancing as you celebrate all you have accomplished. Put on your ugly sweaters, blast Mariah Carey's Christmas album, and let loose!
8 a.m. classes finished.
The dreaded classes, the classes that breached your full night's sleep and left you exhausted, are done. No longer will you have to basically wake up in the middle of the night just to attend a class. Now you can sleep hours past when you had to wake up and you wonder how on earth you could ever get up that early.
7 parties a week.
When you and all of your friends have united again, you want to pretty much have a party each day of the week. Secret Santas, cookie exchanges, or wild nights, your schedules are open so you can all rejoice and have a get-together every night if that is what you want.
6 seasons watched.
Without the trivial inconveniences of coursework, you can now catch up on Netflix with the many seasons of a show you may have missed. When you fall so behind on a series, it becomes very stressful. Now is the time to catch up so you can actually talk to your friends about "Stranger Things" or "Riverdale."
5 classes done!
And you inevitably sing it as dramatically as you sing, "Five golden rings." You made it and you feel a wave of satisfaction pass over your body. You did it. Sometimes you felt trapped in a storm of brutal projects and impossible exams but nonetheless, you made it through alive and you should feel a tremendous sense of pride.
4 weeks at home.
How nice! You have a long time to decompress after a stressful few months. While, compared to the time you actually spent at school, it's a short time, you will feel ready to return to school by the time the weeks are done. It's a long period to refresh, so enjoy it!
3 home-cooked meals.
No more dining hall food! All three of your meals each day are cooked at home, with fresh ingredients, with your own recipes, with your family serving you. Sometimes, you actually have to taste your mom's spaghetti recipe again to realize how much you have missed it during the weeks in a dining commons.
2 feet of snow.
While shoveling can be a pain, there is still a relaxing quality to watching snow accumulate in your front yard and knowing that you are snug in the safety of your own home. Something about the white mountains that build up around your house promotes unity as your family sits together in the comfort of your living room, complete again.
And a calm break in my own bed!
Pretty much, right? You can sleep, you can go out whenever you want, you can see people you have missed for so long, you are no longer encumbered with the stresses that accompany college. You feel free at last and that feeling is ultimately what makes Christmas break so wonderful.
