Everyone knows that time of year. The time of year when Christmas music plays a month before December, where Thanksgiving is pushed aside in craft stores and you really could not care less about getting fat from cookies: the winter holidays. During this time of year, many people are excited about the prospect of gifts under the tree and the sense of family around them, but what do the holidays mean to the students of Northwood High School?
“[The holidays mean] we don’t have school and stuff; we spend time with our family and our friends,” sophomore Christian Lambauer said. “You can sleep longer, you can go on vacation, you have lots of fun.”
Junior Kim O’Neil agreed.
“They mean hanging out with family and relaxing and nothing going on,” O’Neil said.
While some students may feel that the holidays are about relaxing, senior Julio Romero has a different view of the holidays.
“The holidays to me are a time when you can… see how the year has been, the good and bad and see how you could do better in the future,” Romero said.
Students commonly do things over the holidays that they normally would not do.
“The holidays are usually when my dad and mom have enough vacation and we’ll all drive up and see [my family],” junior Becky Gilbert said. “It’s basically when I get to see my family again. The majority of my family lives up in New York and Michigan and the northern states, and none of them really come down and visit us.”
Freshman Susan McKnight had more to add.
“I get to see my [mother’s] side of the family and do Secret Santas,” McKnight said. “Then I’ll come back and go to my grandma’s house and see the rest of my [mother’s] family and do Secret Santas and get presents.”
Lambauer also has something that makes the holidays special to him.
“For the big holidays like winter break and summer break, I travel a lot with my family,” Lambauer said. “[My family and I] go skiing during the winter.”
During the holidays some students have a certain something that their holidays revolve around.
“It’s a holiday,” Romero said. “Personally, for us, it’s usually just a holiday, nothing religious.”
But some students see the holidays as a time to focus on religion.
“Holidays are pretty much the one time of the year that we actually go to Mass,” O’Neil said. “It’s our most religious day of the year, but we also go see family.”
While some would think that presents would be the thing that students care about, that is not the case for most students.
“[My family and I] are about being around the people you love… I mean it’s just stuff,” Romero said.
O’Neil had a slightly different idea.
“At 16, I look forward to the presents,” said O’Neil. “But I also look forward to seeing my family.”
For most students, they have that one holiday memory that is their favorite.
“I remember when I was a toddler and we had one of my uncle’s games out and it was like flicking this little disk and when you flicked [the disk] it would go around a track,” said Gilbert. “I was always the one who would win and my family would always make fun of me because I’m the youngest, so I always had my tongue out and so for the rest of the game everyone would have their tongue out when they were flicking [the disk].”
— By Morgan Yigdal