The holidays bring hot cocoa, an excess of Christmas themed decorations, and the annual return of Mariah Carey.
But more importantly, it brings the sudden unexplainable urge to have someone by your side in the frosty season, whether you truly want it or not. Perhaps it’s something about the temperature dropping or the air getting chill, but it’s strange how these couples just magically seem to appear out of nowhere.
It’s easy to spot them. They might be wearing matching pajamas, holding hands, flirting in the open, or showing extreme public displays of affection. It can be weird because just last week, so-and-so was side-eyeing the other person with a sour face.
Out of the entire year, it’s always around the holiday season that more Cal students see others on campus holding hands as if they weren’t enemies just a month ago. Which leads us into a little something called “Cuffing Season,” where people decide that dating is good. At least for the time being.
“It’s understandable that you’d want to have somebody to be in a relationship with over the holidays,” junior Isabel Brown said. “It definitely feels more like a consolidation relationship rather than something that you’d be interested in.”
Brown labeled the season’s couple gimmick as silly, but don’t tell that to people on TikTok and Instagram. The second December hits, it’s like the algorithm decides to show countless people coupling up. Christmas just makes everyone want a special someone to date or cuddle with.
“Everyone’s, like, snuggling,” senior Freya Chikhalikar said. “The girls snuggle each other the most. The guys also snuggle each other. Maybe they’re joking, maybe they’re not. No one knows. Nobody really knows.”
Chikhalikar noted that how everyone snuggled up beside each other reminded her of penguins.
Free broadcast and Internet radio platform Audacy wrote that roughly 48% of 1,000 American participants in a survey made by the dating app, Bumble, think that the holidays are a perfect time to date.
“If you were just in it for like monetary and things then that’s not a good relationship,” senior Alanzo Pellatiro said.
Cuffing Season usually starts around Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s because of the rise of events like Friendsgiving, where people gather up at someone’s house and flex their cooking talent.
And with all these get-togethers, everyone suddenly wants someone to say, “Wow, babe you made all this?” and spend over two hours glazing their food.
Maybe it’s all the secret Santa’s and how so-and-so would really like a $250-something, but it exceeds the budget their friends set for the affair leading their significant other to purchase said-item.
If anything, any event that pops up around this time of year will have people pairing up to bring someone over.
But just as new couples are formed, others break up.
Sometimes it’s purely natural causes, like they just didn’t seem to be as close as they once were. Perhaps the spark they once had, fizzled out, or just went “Ka-boom!”, leaving two teens deciding the best option was to opt out.
“There were a lot more [couples] last year,” senior Korneli Dior said. “[But they] all tried it and realized ‘Oh, this isn’t for me’.”
Dior said they thought couples who break up around these times, could possibly feel hatred for each other.
But maybe it’s just Person A doesn’t want to splurge on an insane amount of things just to spark a mere moment of joy in Person B. Maybe there are things going on at home, and they wanted to take it easy.
Maybe they just don’t have a lot of money on hand to spend in one sitting. The world’s tough like that, honestly.
For some reason, the world has decided that winter is the best time to get a partner. Doesn’t matter if one needs to resort to unorthodox ways, just get that special someone somehow, and deal with it later.
Whether the masses think Cuffing Season is a special time, something absolutely stupid, or just didn’t know about it until now, one thing is for certain. Cuffing Season is not going to go away anytime soon. So just grab a mug of hot cocoa or whatever beverage you like to drink, and watch some Hallmark Christmas movies with the person you’ll be cuffed to, for a few months
