A Season to be Jolly?

Students I have seen lately are looking forward to the Christmas break. Some are homesick, some are stressed by study. Is the festive season a positive for our mental well-being? There is the stress of buying presents, which family members go where for Christmas and will Aunt Ada get on with your rather left wing cousin. A large amount of alcohol consumed can act as a depressant and increased food intake causes us to diet in the new year. That's enough to depress anyone. There is a myth that suicides increase over the Christmas holidays but research is not suggesting this. It seems that there are positive benefits to this holiday period such as the gathering of friends and relatives reducing isolation and memories evoking a sense of hopefulness. So it seems that what we make of Christmas is down to us. How do you spend this holiday time? Do you need to re-evaluate so that it is a time to relax and destress before coming back to uni?