I hate the Christmas and new year holidays. They’re such a novel concept to me. My school never gave me a week-long break for Christmas and New Year. Instead, we’d be preparing for our internal exams due first of January. So when I first moved to college and I got introduced to the idea of a winter break, it seemed like such a gift.Â
“So you’re telling me, that there is a weeklong break in the middle of the school year?”
“Yes”
“And exams?”
“Well…second week of Jan”
My heart sank again. The inevitable came back. Why would you give me holidays, if that meant exams right after?! That’s like giving a dog a treat and then telling it, it has a doctor’s appointment right after! From that moment on, winter break stopped being a gift and started feeling like a prank with good PR. On paper, it’s rest. In reality, it’s borrowed time. Every moment of supposed relaxation comes with a quiet countdown ticking in the background. You’re sipping hot chocolate, but somewhere in your head a syllabus is clearing its throat.
The days themselves are strange. They’re too free to be productive and too anxious to be restful. You wake up without alarms but with guilt. You tell yourself you’ll start studying “tomorrow,” a word that loses meaning very quickly between Christmas and New Year. Tomorrow keeps moving, like a scam call you can’t block.
Meanwhile, the world insists that this is the happiest time of the year. People ask what you’re doing for the holidays as if “mentally negotiating with my exam timetable” is a festive answer. Family gatherings blur into revision sessions you never quite commit to. Books stay closed. Stress stays open.
This is where the claustrophobia really kicks in. Everyone is home. Every room is occupied. Every conversation begins with food and ends with plans. There is nowhere to disappear without looking rude or ungrateful. Even alone time has an audience. Someone always wants to know why you’re being “so quiet.”
Time collapses. Lunch becomes dinner becomes another day gone.You forget what day it is, but still remember the looming threat of exams around the corner. I still remember last year. Getting on my flight back home. Knowing fully well I will have to study for my exams that are less than 2 weeks away. And then there’s New Year’s Eve. The grand finale. The night you’re supposed to feel renewed and hopeful and ready to reinvent yourself. Instead, it feels like standing at the edge of a cliff holding unresolved to-do lists. Everyone is counting down the seconds while you’re counting chapters. Fireworks go off, and all you can think is that the syllabus has followed you into the new year.
I think that’s why this stretch of holidays feels so suffocating. It pretends to be a pause, but it isn’t. It’s a waiting room. A brightly lit one, filled with noise, expectations, and the constant reminder that once this is over, you’re back to being evaluated.
But this year on the other hand. This year was different. Winter break was the term break. All the stress of exams came in, knocked me unconscious and did its job before Winter break even started. Sure it was very hectic, but hey! Look at the bright side! I don’t have to feel claustrophobic about spending Christmas and New Years worrying about the exams. And yet, peace never comes alone.
Because now there are no exams.Â
Just results.
Results are worse. Exams at least let you do something. You can study, panic, revise, bargain with past versions of yourself. Results require patience, a skill I do not possess. There is nothing to prepare for, nothing to fix, nothing to cram. Just waiting. Waiting while your brain replays every answer you wrote like a badly edited director’s cut.
I found myself missing exam time. Missing the certainty of stress. Missing the comfort of knowing exactly what I was anxious about. Exams are loud. Results are silent. Exams shout at you. Results stare.
So here I am, during a perfectly exam-free holiday season, somehow longing for the very thing I spent years resenting. Turns out I don’t hate stress. I just hate suspense.
And maybe that’s the real tradition I’ve carried forward. Not Christmas. Not New Year. Just the annual realization that no matter how the calendar is arranged, my anxiety will always find a way to RSVP.