With Thanksgiving just behind us and the break ahead, the holidays can bring a sense of togetherness to our community, but everyone celebrates them differently.
For some, the holidays involve travel. Freshman Luken Galdos visits faraway family for the holidays, saying, “We go to Spain on Christmas … I like being with my cousins and seeing them because I don’t really see them very often.”
With lots of family gatherings, sometimes the holidays are stressful. Faculty member Amanda Lovett says, “When I was a child, my parents were divorced, and so I actually did not like Thanksgiving because it was a really stressful time for me.” Lovett tries to ensure that this won’t be the case for her kids, saying, “One of the things that’s really important to me is to have calm on Thanksgiving. I don’t like running around and trying to see this person and that person … I like to have it be really low key … and so what we like to do is we just get up, and we watch Thanksgiving parades, and … maybe Christmas shows or whatever’s on.”
Eighth grader Kingston McCall also has a festive tradition that his family does every year: “Every December on Christmas Eve, we get in a car, and we drive around town looking at all of the cool houses with Christmas lights.” McCall recalls some especially magical houses, saying, “Some of the houses that you go to … have this really cool thing where they sync up the Christmas lights with the radio.”
And what are the holidays without food? Galdos enjoys eating during the holidays, with his favorite holiday food being “chicken, like a whole chicken.”
Some traditions withstand the test of time. Lovett says, “One of the things that I did from growing up was my stepbrother and I would get the wishbone … I like doing that if we’re cooking a turkey … My stepbrother and I would pull apart the wishbone and see who got the bigger half. So that’s really fun.”
Overall, in the midst of the bitter-cold winter, the holidays are a great time to have a great time!
