When you get to college, your friends become your family, especially your roommates. Therefore, when the holidays come around, it’s important to celebrate them with your college family, too.

There are many ways to go about this, and one of them could be decorating the apartment. As the holidays loom closer, everyone can go out and buy lights and wreaths. A great idea would be to add some Christmas cheer (if you celebrate Christmas) by buying a small tree that you can light up in the apartment. One of my roommates did this and we love it. Or if you’re Jewish, you could get a menorah to decorate the apartment with. 

Another fun idea for celebrating the holidays is to do a gift exchange. If you and your roommates are jokesters, it could be fun to do a white elephant gift exchange. In this game, each roommate finds or buys a funny gift and wraps it up to exchange with another roommate. To play, you start with each roommate and they have a gift in front of them. Then everyone sits in a circle and picks a number. The person who gets the number one goes last, and the highest number goes first. The first person chooses a gift that they want and trades presents with the person who has their desired gift. This goes on until the person who chose one has gone. Then everyone opens their mystery gifts.

If a white elephant is not your style, there is also the option of secret Santa. Secret Santa is when each roommate gets another roommate and they have to secretly give them gifts throughout the week. The types of gifts are just small things that you know your person will enjoy so maybe candy, jewelry, a small trinket, etc. It’s all about small, meaningful gifts that could give the chosen person a hint at your identity. Then, at the end of the week, you have to guess who your secret Santa is. 

A final fun roommate activity would be to create your own advent calendar. To do this you would have to split the calendar up and instead of chocolates, each roommate would write something in the calendar. For example, this could be something like $10 for your next shopping trip, your next coffee is on me, etc. For making the calendar, each roommate would create their own notes for a certain amount of days. Then the other roommates will open the boxes and receive their small gift. You can all share the calendar so one person does not have to create 25 little notes, but instead, for example, only about seven if there are four of you. 

Hopefully these ideas give you and roommates something fun to do over the next few weeks to help you get into the spirit of winter holidays!

Bella is a junior in LAS. 

[email protected]