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Humans are emotionally tied to anniversaries. Sometimes it’s conscious, like reliably crying each year as you blow out your birthday candles and acknowledge your fear of getting older. Other times it’s subconscious, even primitive, like noticing a mysterious sadness in the air before realizing it’s the anniversary of a loved one’s death.

The holiday season is an anniversary in its own right. But unlike personal anniversaries, the reminders of the holiday season’s annual return are inescapable. Mariah Carey starts playing in the grocery store, artificial pumpkin spice air freshener saturates the dorm halls and someone sitting in front of you in lecture is making a “2025 Black Friday wishlist” on their computer.

During our first months away from home, college students experience the so-called anniversary of the holiday season differently than ever before. It can be as simple as feeling weird when our personal and familial traditions become impossible to carry out in our new environments.

These traditions can be much more important to us than we realize. Suddenly, there’s nothing to distract us from anxiety about final........

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