My White Christmas

There’s been something wonderful about the past week – I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Sure, I’ve had to sleep on a couch in the basement for the past 7 nights, but that’s all with good reason. My aunt and grandmother are here (today is my grandmother’s 93rd Christmas!) and are taking up some of the beds. Along with that, my sister, her fiance, and both of my brothers are here. It’s pretty unprecedented to get us all under one roof nowadays, since we go to school all over the country. If having the ones I love around means having to sleep on the couch for a week, well then, that’s pretty fine by me.

I arrived home a week ago with one of my best friends and fraternity brothers – he was going to spend the night on Friday and fly out for his own holiday festivities on Saturday. We decided Friday night that, since it was going to snow a bit, we’d go in the hot tub and invite another friend from school and my best friend from home over to enjoy being back. Little did we know the kind of snow that was coming! What resulted was a weekend of being snowbound in my house! All four of us until late Sunday afternoon!

Despite the mishap, it was one of the most beautiful times I’ve had this semester. Being trapped in a house with feet of snow falling outside with my best friends and family was amazing – we played Pokemon monopoly, made copious amounts of cut-out cookies, played sorry, ping pong, video games, watched movies, played with the dog, pranced around the snow, had snowball fights, made meals together, and hungout well into the nights. With classes done and all of us home for the holidays with nothing else to do, it was like being a kid again, and really reminds you of what’s important in life. More importantly, I’m constantly amazed at how my friends from college and my friends from high school blend perfectly into one another and my life. People fall in love with the students from William and Mary, and my parents would have had them stay much longer if they could have!

Beyond that, the week has been an amazing one in other ways. Between seeing family, wrapping lots of presents for the ones I love, great dinners and traditions, countless viewings of “Grinch,” “White Christmas,” “Home Alone,” and listening to the “Nutcracker,” “Chris Botti Christmas,” and “Bing Crosby” on repeat the holidays have been in full bloom at the Focarino household!

Last night we all went to Maggiano’s for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, but this year we spiced it up a bit by inviting all of the people we knew who didn’t have family or others to spend the holidays with to dinner! The result was a beautiful hodgepodge of friends and we reveled for hours in each others company. The night before, Bailey, another fellow blogger, traveled north from Richmond to stay with my family and we both attended a holiday candlelit choral concert at the National Cathedral in DC, which was beautiful.

This morning, after a homemade breakfast from my siblings, the present opening commenced and lasted for hours – it’s still so funny to watch how my three siblings and myself will sit around for hours after the opening has finished just playing with our gifts. Marco Polo, our Newfoundland, busied himself for just as long with a giant bone.

I have six more days at home before flying to Chicago on New Year’s Eve to spend time with some of my closest friends from school like fellow blogger Chloe for five days. After that, I’ll be flying home and heading down to Newport News the next day to kick it for three days with my little brother in my fraternity. He’s taking me skiing at Wintergreen one day, which I’m looking forward immensely. After that, him and I are heading back up to Northern Virginia because one of our other fraternity brothers is flying in to stay with my family for 8 days before we all head back down to school!

It’s enough to make you realize that even when you’re not physically at William and Mary, you always want to keep a little piece of it by your side at all times.

This holiday season, more than ever, I’m thankful for those little things, and the ones closest to me.

Take the time to look around you and say a silent “thank you” – for all that we’ve been given and how lucky we truly are.

For those of you who celebrate it – Merry Christmas. For everybody else, my warmest holiday wishes to you and yours for a happy holidays and a safe and prosperous New Year!

On a snowy evening,

Yours,

Brian