From celebrating holidays to getting to sleep in, it’s easy to see why winter break is a favorite time of the year for many students.  After weeks of doing homework and cramming for last-minute tests, winter break is a welcome respite to refocus for the new year. These days, when people often get caught up in their own busy schedules and become focused on working to meet deadlines, it is easy to lose track of other important things, such as spending time with family members.  This also makes winter break time an ideal opportunity to reconnect with family members and friends whom you may not have had much time with during the past few months.

For many people, the holiday season is also a time steeped in tradition.  Whether you have a family get-together or decorate your house for the holidays, there are a variety of fun traditions to take part in or add to the ones you currently have.  For example, Sophia Carr, a junior, likes to bake cookies with her family. She also goes to the Philadelphia Christmas Village, where there are vendors who sell everything from ornaments and ugly Christmas sweaters to chocolates and other sweets, all of which are perfect gift items.   

When it comes to gift exchanges, Isabella Campese, another junior, has a fun holiday tradition.  Every year, a week before Christmas, her mom’s side of the family has a white elephant gift exchange.  At this event, everyone brings a gift, and each person chooses a gift, which other people can steal.  Her family always includes one item in the gift pool that nobody would want – last year, it was a mop – which makes the event lots of fun.

Personally, my favorite holiday tradition is making Pfeffernüsse, or German spice cookies.  I also enjoy looking back on the previous year to make New Year’s resolutions.  Although some people believe that making New Year’s resolutions is fruitless because they will likely break them by the second week of January, it is not pointless to think about the improvements you strive to make next year.  If you get nothing else out of making resolutions, they are funny to look back on at the end of the year. Case in point, when I made my resolutions for 2018, I wrote that I would get more sleep by going to bed at 10:30 each night. When I look back on that resolution now, I laugh thinking about how unrealistic my old expectations were, given my hectic schedule.  If you look back on your old resolutions and see that you broke them because you set unrealistic goals for yourself, you can use the experience to create more achievable goals for the next year.

No matter what you choose to do over winter break, the staff of The Fordian wishes you happy holidays and a happy winter break!