Comfort, weirdness accompanies students home for the holidays

Students discuss the rollercoaster of emotions involved with traveling back to their hometowns for the holiday season. Unsplash

Whether it’s Michael Bublé singing “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” or Mariah Carey belting her heart out in “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” these winter anthems play on loop in the background of every grocery store, shopping mall and Starbucks, making it virtually impossible not to think about returning home for the holidays. 

But for some college students, traveling home over winter break is not quite as romantic as the songs make it sound. Sure, there are perks involved: being reunited with family, catching up with high school friends and eating endless amounts of home-cooked foods instead of Trader Joe’s microwavable meals. 

Yet when it actually comes time for RJ Uriarte, a junior psychology and religious studies double major, to visit her hometown of San Diego, she knows it won’t quite feel the same. After spending the last few years living in Orange away from her family, she has cultivated a new sense of home with her friends at Chapman.

“I know where all the silverware, plates and all the little details are, but it feels like I am a visitor or a guest in (my parents’) house and I don’t have a right to live there permanently anymore,” Uriarte said.

Many students reiterate this feeling of confusion when returning home for the holidays. The reason why — according to Serena Hittman, a junior communication studies major — is because it's easy to think of yourself as the main character. 

She told The Panther when she visits her home of Renton, Washington, she has to remind herself the town does not revolve around her. After spending 18 years of her life attached to the place, Hittman said it can be jarring for her to return home and see the changes that have occurred in her absence.

“When I got to my hometown and drove around, I kind of felt like a stranger in my home town, to be honest,” Hittman said. “I knew it was home, but it didn't feel like home because I hadn’t been there in so long. When you come to college, life still goes on back home. New shops were open, other stuff was closed. And it was like ‘Oh, everyone else also moved on.’ It just doesn’t stop when you leave.”

There’s always an invisible game of tug of war pulling students to their college life in one direction and their hometown life in the other. For Hittman, being home means driving around late at night with her high school friends listening to the radio, but there’s always the desire to return to campus, dive into her studies and spend time with her roommate. 

“It’s definitely a separation,” Hittman said. “I have my California life and a Washington life. I am the same, but I have two very different lives.”

Megan Torres, a sophomore applied human physiology major who also deals with intense separation anxiety from her college life, told The Panther her excitement going back home to Bakersfield served as a distraction from missing her college friends.

“I didn’t expect to miss my friends as much as I did,” Torres said. “I live with most of my friends, so I see them basically every minute of every day except for when I’m in class. It was really weird to be away from them, but we still texted and Snapchatted each other the entire time.”

The stress and effort into traveling back home was also not a problem last year, as many students were already home due to the intensity of the pandemic. Hittman said she reminisced about the idea of just going downstairs to attend Thanksgiving, but was grateful to see more people in person this year.

“Thanksgiving was more meaningful this year,” Hittman said. “It was more of an event having to travel home and do everything rather than just going downstairs and there’s Thanksgiving. We had 18 family members over, it really was an event, and I hadn’t seen them since 2019 for Thanksgiving.”

Even though the emotions of going home from college couldn’t be more confusing to describe, Uriarte said the joy and relief to be home is worth it. Whether it’s bantering with her older sister or sleeping without constantly hitting the snooze button, those activities weigh heavily on her heartstrings. But Uriarte said her favorite tradition being home is spending time with her grandpa eating Von’s double chocolate cake and watching the ducks together near Lake Murray on his birthday.

“It started in sixth grade, because I wanted to do something special with my grandpa since he and I are very close,” Uriarte said. “I wanted to be able to celebrate a little away from the family so we could have time to ourselves, and I kept doing it because he really enjoyed it, and I did too.”

One of the takeaways in Homer’s “The Odyssey” is that you can never go home again. Even though the house is always there, it will never quite be the same. That is exactly how it feels to visit home from college. But Uriarte and many other students said they will still take the opportunity to soak in every trip home and walk down memory lane in their old stomping grounds. 

“Three weeks before Thanksgiving (this year), I was counting down the days, because I feel like going to school in-person was really mentally exhausting.” Uriarte said. “Having to go to clubs and in-person events — I wasn’t used to that. Going home was a much-needed break.”