By Weiwei Koh '26 and Solar Lee '26
The holiday season can be rough for some people and especially with the constraints of the past three years, the only thing we can do is celebrate Christmas in the best way we can and reminisce about the holidays we once had before Covid.
Christmas Prior Covid (From Weiwei)
As December starts rolling in, all I can think about is the faint tunes of “All I Want for Christmas is You”. Christmas is a season filled with love and laughter. It’s filled with shiny lights on Christmas trees and presents underneath them. As a child, this has always been my favorite time of year. Every Christmas I would indubitably receive lots of presents, relax for one of the longest breaks of the year, and eat more sweets than my body could take.
During December we’d always have a one-to-two-week long break celebrating this holiday. For my non-Christian family, it gave us an excuse to take the time off and spend it together under the precedence of Christmas. Having lived in the subtropic zone for most of my life, we’ve never had much snow during Christmas, and if there was any at all, it became dirtied the second it hit the ground.
So, before Covid, every year my family would fly to places like Japan, France, or Canada in search of our own white Christmas. Being able to be around friends and family from all over the world and to be able to travel and build Frosty were all staples of this time of year. However, Christmas, just like everything else, has been totally refashioned since the start of 2020.
Christmas Post-Covid (From Solar)
Even with the unforeseeable conditions of the past three years, Weiwei’s family had spent Christmas in the same way they did before, but my family had to do it differently.
Ever since I was little, my home would always be a place for gathering. Whether it was a notable holiday or just a random Saturday, my home would be packed with people, which, my younger self hated. The fact that I had to spend my weekends with people I barely enjoyed being with was not the idea of a perfect weekend to my screen-obsessed mind. But because of the months of my life spent at home behind that same screen, I was able to appreciate the company we had back then.
With December’s newest Covid outbreak, Christmas this year was celebrated in a more unorthodox way. Initially, my entire family got Covid with the exclusion of me, so I found myself confined in my room, only leaving for lunch or dinner and wearing a mask when I did. But as the person in my family with the weakest immune system, I was bound to contract the virus too, and I did. So, with my whole family sick at home, we ate dinner together for the first time in two weeks. Still, as I sit here typing this out with a fever that feels like it’s constantly rising, all I can do is think about the memories of Christmas I've had the past few years and the hope that the years in the future would get better.
Closing Note
This holiday is a time that is here for all of us, whether to commemorate the birth of Jesus or to be around loved ones. We all have our ties to this beautiful time of year. It's not news that Covid has disrupted and tumbled over everything in its sight and beyond. In spite of that, we’ve been given time to reminisce and appreciate all our memories of Christmas past. And with the uplifting of many regulations, we hope that the most wonderful time of the year will go back to all its past wonders.
Senior Editor: Xin Ru Chew '24
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