“Happy Holidays” is something you hear often this time of year. With Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all so close together, winter break never seems long enough.

The holidays are all about spending time with family and friends. With a longer holiday break, students get time to travel and spend time with family over the break.

During Christmas, there are many religious celebrations that take place. Julie DeNeen, who has a degree in Clinical psychology and has worked in a Connecticut school district, says “Oftentimes holidays like Hanukkah are difficult for families because they are busy celebrating during a time when school is in session.”

According to the Bingham High calendar, this year our Winter break is from December 24th to January 2nd – this makes winter break 8 work days in length, and we will return to school  the day after New Year’s Day. For me, I need more than a day to recover from a holiday or more than one night to fix my sleep schedule, and I usually end up getting a headache.

Michel Campos, a senior at Bingham, says, “I think winter break should be longer, because I have to drive pretty far to get to school, and the roads are really bad this time of year. With less school, I don’t have to drive as much on the bad roads.” The roads are bad and High Schoolers who are barely learning to drive are very accident-prone on the icy roads. If winter break was longer, the risk of accidents by and at Bingham would go down.  Because of parking issues some students also have to walk long distances in the cold and wet to get to school. Increasing the number of sick students.

According to Jordan District’s website, “A winter recess shall be scheduled and will include December 25 and January 1 as recess days.” This is not all though, the only requirements for Thanksgiving Break are: “Thanksgiving Recess shall be two days, Thanksgiving Day (Thursday) and Friday, and may include the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when possible”. There are certain requirements that have to be followed when planning the school calendar.  A large range of factors have to be taken into account when planning out the calendar. However, these plans do not provide sufficient time for students to do the assigned homework, celebrate holidays with family and adjust their sleep schedules to be ready for school again.

Students in high school are piled with homework, and need a break once in a while. A short break isn’t enough time to get homework done, and it usually isn’t enough time to completely de-stress and do the fun winter things you want to do. However, as much as we may think we need a longer winter break, a short one is something we just have to power through for now.

During winter break, you spend time with family, celebrate the holiday, work on homework and missed assignments and do fun winter activities. With all these school and family pressures being put on teenagers today, winter break just never seems long enough.