AMBER MATTICE
Managing Editor
By the headline above I’m sure you have gathered that this is going to be an article centered around the upcoming holiday season.
Don’t get me wrong, I used to be very grumpy around this time of year with everyone spouting Christmas cheer before it was even December but alas, I’ve become what I hated the most. Oh well.
This season is great! Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or any other variation of a holiday during this time of year, there are a few universal things that deserve to be celebrated.
First, how beautiful it is. The snow on the ground, copious amounts of twinkle lights strung as far as the eye can see and the smell of hot chocolate in the air is hard to beat. While the cold will inevitably make me grumpy as I trudge through snow on my way to school, I also love to walk around campus when the snow is falling. Something about it seems so surreal and lovely to me.
Which brings me to my next point, the warm beverages available during this time are to die for. Not literally, because this is a happy time of year and the spooky season has passed but you know what I mean. Hot chocolate is a must for me when it gets chilly and all I want to do is curl up underneath a blanket. But that’s not all! Peppermint Mochas, toasted drinks from Starbucks and anything with cinnamon make for festive and delicious companions on your walk to or from campus in the snow.
Part of the appeal of warm drinks in the winter is the need to be cozy during the holidays. Cuddly blankets and soft pjs are staples of the season and being able to come home to something warm and comfortable makes the stress of this point in the school year a little bit more bearable.
Another reason that I have grown to love this time of year is how magical it all seems. Cliche, I know, but stay with me. Everyone seems so much happier and this season is full of giving and shared laughter. It makes me happy to see so much kindness being spread and, while I wholeheartedly believe there should be more kindness in the world consistently throughout the year, if an excuse is needed, this is it.
While Winter and celebrating the holidays is not everyone’s cup of tea, I would recommend taking a moment to reflect and take a look at the world around you as the colder months progress and the end of the semester is quickly approaching. This time of year is full of beautiful things, opportunities for adventure, cute pictures to be taken and so much more.
I’ll leave you with a quote by W.B. Yeats that I recently discovered that kind of encompasses how I feel about this time of year:
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”