As it does every year, the holiday season has crept up on us. But this year feels a little more stressful than years past. With COVID-19 ruining the holidays last year, there’s more pressure for this year to make up for 2020. Besides that stress, there is the feeling of everyone’s holiday spirit slowly disappearing more and more each year.
This isn’t just a singular occurrence. Teens on Tik Tok are often posting videos about how the excitement around the holidays are fading away.
As kids, the weeks before Thanksgiving and Christmas break felt never-ending. Our excitement couldn’t be contained as we marked days off the calendar getting closer to those faithful days, but now those weeks fly by as we spend those days stressed, studying for finals, working, and helping our families prepare. The “magic” and excitement of Christmas is melting away. We find ourselves looking back, missing the days where we couldn’t sleep on Christmas Eve staying up to try and listen to Santa on the roof.
It’s a sad, inevitable truth. As we grow up, our excitement for the holidays will fade, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t try to keep the spirit alive for longer.
We need to keep holiday traditions alive. Continuing traditions you had as a child can help you feel the holiday spirit more.
When my younger brother was around 9-years-old, he finally figured out that there was no way Santa could fit down a billion chimney’s in one night. When my parents found out he knew, for that Christmas, they stopped labeling gifts from Santa. That year it was only gifts labeled from “Mom and Dad”. That Christmas felt so different than years past. My brother and I told our parents that, and now it’s forever a tradition to label a couple gifts a year sent “from Santa”.
As we grow older, more of our friends and family begin to move away. It’s important to cherish the time we have now. Don’t allow the stress of the holidays consume you. Don’t let the magic completely slip away. We have to make the most of the holiday season as we all grow up.
