This time of year is the best time of year. No matter what you celebrate—Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa—this is the season for charity and family and the warm fuzzy feelings that result from both of those. You probably have the best memories of your times at home, twinkly lights seeming to surround those memories of opening presents under the tree with your family or watching holiday movies with a steaming mug of hot cocoa. Those times seem like the greatest.
And now? Well, now you’re at college for a majority of the holiday season. Still with family, just a different version. Being at home and being in a dorm or your apartment for the season is equally fun, each in their own distinctive ways….
1. Decorating
Home: I’d be willing to bet all of the money that I currently have ($10) that 90 percent of the decorations you have at home are homemade construction paper wall art and elementary school ornaments. Decorating, like many activities at home during the holiday season, usually involves your family, dumb arguments, and Michael Bublé’s Christmas album on repeat. After you’re done, however, your home is the definintion of Christmas.
College: Well, most of my decorations are things I got for free or they came from the Dollar Store. Should I buy Christmas lights or dinner tonight? Does that pile of beer cans in the corner count as a tree? Or maybe that scraggly dead plant your roommate bought back in the beginning of the semester with the intent of cultivating a “green thumb?”
2. Presents
Home: Santa always delivers, though giving presents really is just as fun as getting them. Present exchanges are family events a lot of the time, and the presents are usually quite nice, as adults typically have jobs. At home, you can shop throughout November and December to find the perfect gifts for family and friends.
College: Is being a college student a valid excuse for not buying anyone presents? Can we go back to homemade cards and “free hug” vouchers? Lack of time and money generally leads to desperate attempts to create presents out of thin air on the 24th.
3. Holiday parties
Home: Family and appropriate attire, but you generally don’t have to provide anything.
College: Frat parties and alcohol, but still always holiday-themed. Probably a potluck unless located in the basement of a fraternity house. Attire here is more about lack of clothes than modesty, but reindeer ears or a Santa hat are pretty much a requirement.
4. Baking
Home: My mom likes to hold this thing we, the kids, have termed “a cookie sweatshop.” One Saturday in December, she’ll have all three of us in the kitchen, rolling out snickerdoodles, dunking snowballs in powdered sugar, and drawing faces on gingerbread men. Though embarrassingly exhausting and ridiculously timely, the end result is pretty great, and laughter and accidental cookie destruction make the occasion one to look forward to.
College: Well, you probably started off already drunk, you and your friends are definitely still drinking while baking, and no matter the end result—burned gingerbread blobs, anyone?—you’ll look forward to more holiday baking days the rest of the season.
5. Looking at all the lights hung up outside
Home: Maybe you’re on the way home from going out to dinner or visiting the grandparents and you decide to take a detour through the neighborhood to enjoy all the glittering lights strung from houses and trees. Or maybe you just like to look out your window before you go to bed to see your street is sparkling with merry cheer.
College: You could be on your way back from a night out, or perhaps its another 2 a.m. Papa John’s run. Granted, the entire campus probably isn’t as decked out as the suburbs (I attribute this to the lack of mothers), but even just a couple of trees tangled in white lights is enough to make you smile and forget about your homework for an instant.
6. Hot chocolate
Home: A great treat to watch a movie with, or something your mom used to welcome you with after you came inside from playing in the snow.
College: Spiked. Always spiked.
7. Snow
Home: The cause of those wonderful school delays and cancellations. Nothing was better. When you were little you would get up early and play in the snow piles at the end of your driveway, have snowball fights, make snow angels, build snowmen, go sledding – the list goes on and on.
College: We’re still jst as excited for class cancellations and delays. If you’re snowed in, you’re basically guaranteed to be snowed in with friends. And you probably won’t have to shovel. That is the definition of a win-win situation.
Lucky for us college students, we get to enjoy both the holidays at home and at school. Make as much of the season as you can during finals, and then once you return home you can embrace the holidays even more with family. Sometimes enjoying life is worth more than that 'A'—so go drink some hot chocolate and watch "The Santa Clause," okay?
