The Way I See It — Grace College’s Christmas
By Madisson Heinl
The way I see it, Christmas traditions are what hold the campus together. Many of us have individual family Christmas traditions, but even better are the traditions that we have as a student body.
One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the holiday sweater shopping fever that sweeps over campus. For two months prior to the Christmas season, students shop at Goodwill in search of a perfectly knitted statement of sentimental cheesiness. Furthermore, if your sweater is several sizes too big, lights up, or smells like an old person’s basement, you obviously have your life together.
Another campus tradition that cannot be forgotten includes gift exchanges that happen in dorms, clusters, and student groups. Usually, these are white elephant gift exchanges in which students buy “prank” gifts for one another. Perhaps one of my favorite examples of a white elephant gift was when last year, a girl smuggled a dying potted Poinsettia plant out of Alpha Dining in her backpack to give to someone else in her class gift exchange.
Christmas decorations also plague the halls of nearly every dorm. This time every year, fire hazards are acceptable because, let’s be honest, would a dorm really catch on fire as a result of twinkle lights put up to celebrate Christ’s birth? Christmas trees and candy canes are found in the lobbies and in the dining hall to remind students of the impending Christmas season. Alpha dining looks like a Christmas haven. That is, until you realize that at least four poinsettia petals have fallen in your meal. Then it just looks like a death trap.
The climax to the Christmas season at Grace College is Christmas chapel. Christmas chapel just feels right. Every student comes together wearing his or her smelliest, cheesiest, most outrageous sweater and prepares to sing Christmas songs and carols with a group of friends and professors with a joy that can only come as a result of celebrating the Savior’s birth.
So get out there, enjoy this Christmas season, and live life according to the way I see it.
