Please enjoy this piece from SHHS Journalism Student Amelia Bonvento.

Holidays are wonderful times. They give you the time to forget about school, the drama it brings, and those crazy midterms just around the corner that we'd all like to stop thinking about.

This holiday started with a snow day on Friday, with blizzard-like conditions and, sadly, ended with slush and melting snow. I milked just about everything out of our two-plus weeks off: heard every single recorded Christmas song on every radio station, baked every recipe, packed more into this vacation than a regular school week allows (which, by the way, is a lot). And is it just me, or, despite all of the activity that this time of year brings, has yet another holiday vacation seemed to go by too fast? Certainly the hours of simply staring up at the tree (our biggest one yet), shopping, opening gifts, meeting and greeting family and friends, and friends of the family (some of said people you are supposed to remember but you somehow never knew they existed…so much for a three-year-old's memory. Sorry, I don't remember the last time we apparently met!) have just evaporated into the crisp air! There is no way that all of this time is up! Those lovely dinner outings seemed to go on forever and I didn't even mind that the food was taking some time to be prepared. It all tasted wonderful, and especially so when you are surrounded by good company. The outing to the castle-in-the-backyard-of-our-community that is the Gothic and monstrous Lyndhurst lasted for hours. It was one of those things I normally wouldn't have gone to. It just screamed "tourist of the Hudson River Valley," yet, once there, you couldn't help but smile as you remembered your childhood, since every room in the place was decorated to capacity as a certain fairytale. It was a holiday special, and you didn't need to be five to enjoy it. People actually lived here!? Yes, very rich people. Traveling up the main staircase you could only imagine how it would have been to spend a night in this place, and, walking down the back, much more plain, staircase, where it was understood that the family themselves never ventured, you couldn't help but think of what a contrast it would have been to live there as a servant.

And then there was the New Year! A time for new resolutions, a fresh blank slate for everyone. I went to a friend's house; she was hosting a small party. It was the first time my family was all off doing their own things, but it worked. We laughed and played around quite a lot with the chocolate fondue maker until our sugar-high levels were off the charts. Hours were spent before the ball dropped watching live feeds from Times Square, where we rocked out and debated whether Taylor Swift really was crazy for taking off her coat during her song. It was a very balmy two degrees. Thanks a lot wind chill! Then we welcomed in the New Year with a hearty group scream and stayed up until 5:30 in the a.m.. A new record! All the while, throughout the night, I was snapping pictures on my newest prized possession, my little Kodak digital. I only hoped that some of said pictures wouldn't come back to spite me on Facebook a week or so later.

This holiday has been absolutely spectacular for me, and I really do feel that it was the best and most meaningful season so far.