You’re going to your friend’s holiday party back home and you remind yourself that every single party this time of year has some kind of holiday edition to it. The plastic cups are red, the puke is green... it’s all so very festive.

Girls wear Santa suit-type nighties to parties, and you are now classically conditioned to get an erection every time you see that fabric. This becomes embarrassing as you sit down to watch “The Night before Christmas” with your cousins.

For some reason, people think peppermint schnapps is a festive and fun addition to the usual regimen of alcohol. Mr. Schnapps found that most of his profits came from this time of year. That’s why he invented eggnog flavored schnapps as well.

People wear scarves a great deal, but it’s no longer just something to be worn outside. Around the holidays, most of the time you will see the scarf worn with a t-shirt, kind of like how Tiny Tim does in “A Christmas Carol.” But then you remember that he had some kind of terrible disease, and you wonder if your friend is trying to tell you something.

Another friend wears sunglasses while watching holiday movies because he claims that it’s too intense to stare at the whiteness of Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and the snow that is made of shredded war bonds as they spontaneously tap-dance on their anti-communist paranoia. It’s a white Christmas, dammit, not a red one. You notice that he is rolling the mistletoe, but you say nothing.

A lot of your holiday parties take place back at home with your high school friends. In addition to everything being holiday themed, you’re partying with people you don’t see on a regular basis. This presents a double whammy in terms of weirdness — like all of a sudden Bizarro Superman wears Spiderman’s costume.

So you go to the only common ground you have: you are all sexually frustrated college students who watch “Arrested Development.” After you’ve established that A) Yes it’s a great show B) Oh it’s sad it’s been canceled. You still have that red cup in your hand and view through the cigarette smoke the vision of the girl/guy you had a crush on in high school but never got the nerve to say anything to. Now that you’ve matured (i.e. discovered alcohol) your fears melt faster than teenyboppers at a Fall Out Boy concert. Dipped in molten lava. Yes.

So people get drunker because oh my lord I haven’t seen you in three years and my girlfriend is in another state and I won’t see her for weeks and well you seem like a good enough idea for tonight.

People break up with their high school significant others over Thanksgiving break and then awkwardly hook up with them over winter break. One of the two members of the couple swears that it will work out, baby — I’ll wait for you till next break. And by “next break” you mean in four years at the high school reunion in the back of your car while you peel off each other’s nametags and dignity with fake aplomb. In that way, yes, you remain true to your high school sweetheart.

But before that desperate vision of “Regrettable Hookups Yet to Come,” you still have tonight. Your banter about Arrested Development has led to an auspicious start. But your friends knock on your door, just when she was about to take off her gay apparel. Some idiot tried to smoke the mistletoe, and so it looks like it’s another trip to the ER this holiday season. You’re riding shotgun while your best friend makes sure the mistletoe miscreant doesn’t barf all over the backseat of your hybrid sled. If you wear mittens, nobody knows you’re giving them the finger.

After all the revelry, you are only left with the realization that the weird purgatory that you experience when you are on breaks will only get stranger as time goes on. Then all of the holiday accoutrements in the world can’t maintain the illusion. Times are changing; high school is viewed in a fractured window and every day forward is the only time you have left in college. So enjoy the wreath-like cycles for now, because sooner or later no matter how much peppermint flavored Yule-tide joy you have, your past will never look like that girl in the Santa nightie.

During the holidays Chris volunteers as a motivational speaker at local petting zoos. Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.