Fresh baked cookies, ornaments hung from the tree, bright colorful Christmas lights! All of these are supposedly done to make celebrating the holidays fun, but do they really just add more work and stress?

Many families get ready for the holidays by cutting the tree down, decorating it with lights, and filling the bottom of the tree with as many gifts as they can. Some neighbors even like to compete by seeing who can put more lights on their house to show how much holiday spirit they have.

Sometimes though, what can be called holiday spirit can be turned into just more work to do over the holidays. What is said to be “all in fun” then turns into a lot more. For example, there are the people who camp out nights before a store opens, just to get a big sale on certain items. Paige Haskins (’13) believes that the holiday spirit can become too extreme when there are massive crowds waiting to get in a store to get gifts for others a month before Christmas even starts.

Matthew Stern (’13) says that some of his family holiday traditions are setting up Christmas lights and then decorating the tree. “It can start becoming work instead of fun,” he stated. Another student, Graylin Walker (’15) thinks that the traditions can never be too extreme. “It’s just having fun,” he stated.

Another way that holiday traditions can become too extreme is when everyone is trying to see who has the brightest and most decorative lights on their house. Or even, when they add the reindeer and snowman models to their front yard.

Sometimes, it can all just become a little too much. It’s good to have holiday spirit and keep traditions, but overdoing it to the point where you spend more time doing work than enjoying the holidays and the season itself is not fun.