When you are younger, the holidays are this magical time of the year. Now, for me, it is just a pain. I personally have a hard time going home for the holidays, and there are a few reasons why. 

For Thanksgiving, family comes together, and you get a week off from school, and you get to eat all the food and sweets you want. You can sleep in for a few days, catch up on some of your late homework. I used to love Thanksgiving because this was when my family would drive out to New Hampshire for friends Thanksgiving and family Thanksgiving with both of my parents’ families.

Then comes Christmas, with more time off from school and your list to Santa becoming a reality under your sparkly Christmas tree. There are these little delicious cookies that you only get to eat during this time of the year and there is this high. Driving back to New Hampshire to see family then making our way back home stopping in Rochester, New York to see friends for New Years.

New Years is at the end of this stretch of being home for a long time, and there is that week in between Christmas and New Years when you do not know what the heck to do. This week is probably the most boring week out of the 52 of the year. But when I was younger this meant that I got to see my out-of-state friends for a long weekend and tell them about all the cool gifts I got while playing games with them all weekend.

Now, I will get into the reasons why I do not like the holidays as an adult. As a student in college, you have two lives, your school life and your at-home life. When I get home for the holidays, it feels like I do not live at the home I lived in for almost 20 years. My room is empty, my sister and parents are working and I am doing things to help my parents out because I have the time off. 

Then we have the food, so much food. There is so much food that we will be eating Thanksgiving and Christmas leftovers until February. My dad always gets a huge turkey for Thanksgiving and then a huge beef roast for Christmas, and this is on top of a big seafood dinner from Christmas Eve. By the end of both of these holiday meals, I feel like I cannot eat for days because I am so stuffed.

I am already not a big fan of leftovers, let alone these meals in general. I do not like turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing or pie. For Christmas, I do not like roast beef or gravy. I cannot always explain why I do not like these meals, maybe it is because of how overfilling they are or that we have the same exact thing every year.

It would not be the holidays without family. I love my family, do not get me wrong, I do however find it challenging sometimes to visit with them over the holidays. For one, I do not see them on a regular basis, and it is hard to connect with them when you have not seen them all year or even in two plus years. So much is going on in my life at this age, it is very difficult for me to sit down and explain every detail of my life. 

Secondly, my mother’s side of the family refuses to travel to visit us, so it is always on me to travel to see them when everyone in my family has different schedules. This comes with a lot of nagging every year between my mother and her family, which stresses me out.

And third, the holidays are a hard time for my family to celebrate because my grandfather died in between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2005, right before my sister was born. It is also difficult for my grandmother because their anniversary always falls during Thanksgiving week. 

The holidays are these times of the year to be with your family and sit down for a nice meal, bicker a little with them and watch football until dad falls asleep on the coach. It gets repetitive and annoying after a while. I am looking forward to going home soon to be with my family, but it would be nice to be home without all the holiday stress.