My family has always loved Christmas. We watch all of the typical Christmas movies together as a family, we pick out and decorate the tree together, and one Christmas day, we open up gifts and spend the day together watching the Macy's day parade and everything else. It is something that I have known since I was a kid and it is strange to think that this year, I didn't get to do some of these things. I have always loved Christmas no matter what was going on in my life or where I was.

This was the first Christmas where I did not get to watch a single Christmas movie with my family. Not only that, but I didn't get to go to the little farm where my family always picks our tree and I didn't get to decorate it with them. This has made me realize something. I never understood what it would be like to miss the holidays with my family as much as I did this past month. Last year, I was still able to squeeze in a Charlie Brown Christmas Special and get the tree and decorate it like we usually do, but this year was different.

Coming home meant something more to me. I had never felt such an urge to come home. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not like where I come from and I really hate leaving Boston for long periods of time, but coming back home and seeing the house completely decked out with red and green put a smile on my face like never before. I never truly understood what it meant to be home for the holidays until this year. It was everything that coming home for the holidays should normally feel like. There is a certain hint of magic in the air as I come in through the front door and see a beautiful Christmas tree that is decorated with the same lights and ornaments that I knew of as a kid.

I can't imagine spending the holidays anywhere else. Obviously, I know that there will come a day where my mother will sell the house and eventually stop decorating the house as much as she does now. There will come a day where being home for the holidays will change, but for now, I plan to enjoy this wonderful feeling that I get by looking around my mothers house and seeing the red and green and smelling pine trees.