Christmas is a time for spending time with your friends and family, and for some
people their family can be their friends. Figuring out how to celebrate the countdown
to Christmas at university can be difficult, coinciding with deadlines, it is getting dark
at 4pm, and the fact that celebrating Christmas can be expensive. However, there
are ways to work around this, and celebrating Christmas is an amazing chance to
create lasting memories, and a bonding experience for you and your housemates.
My house has come up with a tradition we call ‘Nottsmas’, something we are
repeating this year, and hopefully will provide you will some ideas.
Firstly, the name Nottsmas comes from literally what our celebration is, Nottingham
Christmas. The idea came from us wanting to celebrate Christmas together, and to
do something in Nottingham, as we didn’t live in halls anymore, and wouldn’t be
having a big Christmas dinner. We also all go home for Christmas, and so again,
wanted to all celebrate in some way together.
The first thing we do, is figure out when we are all free as well as when our deadlines
are and designate a Friday and Saturday to celebrate on. We try to treat the Friday
as our ‘Christmas eve’ and spend the afternoon and evening preparing for
‘Christmas day’ on the Saturday. Last year, we went to the Christmas market in the
evening, and spent the evening getting in the Christmas spirt (mainly because we
celebrated at the start of December last year), by drinking baileys hot chocolate, and
watching Christmas films Last year we watched the grinch! We also went clubbing
last year, although this is something we aren’t planning on redoing this year, it did
help get us all in the celebratory spirt.
Then, on “Christmas day” or as we called it, Nottsmas day, one of my housemates
would wake up early to start the cooking, while the rest of us get the house ready for
Nottsmas. A key part of the day is having a Christmas tree in the living room, making
us all feel like it is actually Christmas day. While the Christmas dinner is cooking, we
all exchange gifts, that were under the tree. Again, the small detail of having the
presents under the tree, amplifies the feeling that this is actually Christmas. To fix the
problem of celebrating sometimes being expensive, we stuck to a budget of £10 per
person, meaning that we can all still give each other gifts without breaking the bank.
Last year, we ate dinner with prosecco and then one of my other housemates had
cooked the dessert, which we ate while we had a quiz, hosted by the last of my
housemates, full of inside jokes and trivia, which again added to the feeling of a
family Christmas day.
Overall, “Nottsmas’ is a fun, exciting and joyful tradition, which bought my house
closer together and was a perfect way to spend Christmas in Nottingham.