At Christmastime, everyone becomes a kid again — or at least, everyone gets a little leeway for acting like a kid. Even though the Yuletide season never loses its magic, things change a bit as you grow up and head off to college. Here’s how Christmas has changed since the good old days of the editorial board’s youth, when we rode our Razor scooters five miles to school, uphill both ways.
It used to be that we couldn’t wait to get up and run to the tree on Christmas morning. Many of us would wake at, say, 4 a.m., try to wake up our groggy parents, and inevitably be told to go to sleep for four more hours. Those four hours were the longest of the entire year.
These days, most of us would pay to have four extra hours of sleep. In fact, “Extra Time” would probably top our wish lists in the place of honor once occupied by Furbies, Chia Pets, Tamagachis, skateboards, Pokémon cards, Beanie Babies and Gameboys. But as far as we know, Santa Claus cannot bend time to his will — although that is one proposed theory as to how he manages to visit all those homes in a single night.
Speaking of Santa, we tend not to leave out cookies any more. Maybe it’s just that we’re hungry college kids, but we can usually come up with a better use for those chocolate chip morsels. That or we’re just looking out for Saint Nick’s health… he and Mrs. Claus have put on a few extra pounds in recent years.
It used to be that we could bring cookies to school during the holiday season and spend a day of celebration with our friends. Oh, how things change. These days we spend the end of the semester cramming, and not our mouths with Christmas cookies. Now most schools don’t allow homemade baked goods at all; all food has to be store bought to reduce health and safety hazards. We also used to spend a day of class, making arts and crafts as presents for our family; nowadays, if we’re making gifts for people, it’s usually an act of financial necessity.
But hey, those ornaments we made in grade school were pretty good, right? Well, sometime around high school the cuteness wears off, and it comes time to get real gifts for our parents and family members. We’re all about the spirit of giving, but we practically need a different kind of spirits to stay sane in the mall the week before Christmas. Nothing, including driving classes, can prepare you for the horrors of Target’s parking lot during shopping season. And of course, being on the “Nice” list doesn’t let you buy presents for free, so many of us have had the unpleasant experience of working through the holidays. Still, days of labor somehow make a few days off that much sweeter.
Yes, things have changed over the years, but some parts of Christmas are immutable. The same old movies are on TV each year; although it is disconcerting to see young Tim Allen playing Santa seconds before you see old Tim Allen in a Ford commercial. The same songs are always played, nostalgia in every note. And midnight Mass is still an option, but it’s a choice we make now, not something we’re forced into. Fortunately our college sleep schedules are better adapted for that sort of thing than they were when we were kids.
Oh, and when we were kids, it was cold in December, though not everyone misses that aspect. But who knows, there’s a few weeks till Christmas, so winter might come in earnest after all. Just to be safe, don’t go licking lampposts — you’re in college now, you should know better.
