I am grateful for Christmas

I am extremely grateful for Christmas; I think I’m part of the majority for this one. However, if you don’t love Christmas, then hopefully I can change your mind.
I absolutely love all of the fun Christmas traditions: decorations, Christmas music, the twelve sweets of Christmas, family, and presents. If you haven’t been downtown yet, I’d strongly encourage you to check it out. The Christmas decorations throughout are absolutely beautiful. Plus, Fargo now has a gorgeous tree by the ice skating rink. The tree’s lights create a mini Christmas light show. I personally could watch it for hours (if it wasn’t so cold outside). But even if you haven’t made it Downtown yet, you probably have Christmas decorations in your house. I love enjoying the at home Christmas decor. Normally, I help set up the decorations in the family room, but this year I was a little bit extra and set up Christmas decorations in my bedroom as well. It was so much fun to set aside a couple of hours to turn on my Christmas music and get lost in decorating. Even the one hour spent trying to fix the broken light string with my sister turned out to be fun. We ended up laughing a lot, even though we never did fix that light string. Instead we left it in a worse condition than we started thanks to my sister’s unhelpful tik-tok tips. RIP to that light string.
Then there’s my Mom’s twelve sweets of Christmas. For context, every year my Mom will bake twelve different sweets, which she will then give out to family and friends, thus the twelve sweets of Christmas. I’m ashamed to say, I take no part in the baking process. However, I enthusiastically enjoy them, so hopefully that counts for something.
Visiting family is always so much fun; I absolutely love my family. This time is extremely valuable to me, because I unfortunately do not get the chance to see them that often during the year. It’s great to catch up with them and see what everyone’s been up to. It’s also fun to see how my family’s personality changes when they’re reunited with their extended family.
Presents! When I was younger I loved opening them. It was always so exciting to get what I’d been hoping for. Back then, I did try to give presents as well, but that was rather hard when I was a young child with not many resources or money. However, this year I have both, and I was so excited to go shopping for presents for my family. Therefore, I got together with some friends to go shopping. I didn’t have a clear plan for what I wanted to get people. I was just hoping that if I saw something, I’d know. This strategy wasn’t working out very well in the beginning, but then I began to notice things and think, “They would love this!” Hopefully they do. The shopping experience itself was fun too. It was great getting to hang out with my friends. Later, I went shopping with my older sister Andrea. We’re great shopping buddies and had so much fun.
Christmas comes at the perfect time of the year. It always happens right when I need a much needed break. When doing simple tasks becomes harder and harder and I catch myself doing nothing, because I feel like I literally can’t do anything. It’s amazing what two weeks of vacation can do for a burned out student. Obviously, I don’t end up super excited to go back to school, but I do find that school becomes a little bit easier when I do.
Finally, my favorite part of Christmas is the positive Christmas energy. Everyone just seems to be in better spirits. There’s so much love flowing everywhere. Furthermore, I think Christmas itself represents hope. This hopefulness comes from the history of Christmas itself. It comes from memories of our younger selves hopefully anticipating the gifts. Finally, Christmas also provides hope for the future. New Years is just around the corner and I think that it’s human nature to hope that the next year is going to be better than the past one. Unfortunately, this year has set the standards rather low, therefore, maybe next year really will be better.