Every year, a mass exodus of Mississippi State University students from Starkville, Mississippi, to their various hometowns occurs. While many students choose to go home for the holidays, some choose to stay in the college town.
While winter break is a long break with more opportunities for students to travel, the break for the Thanksgiving holiday is shorter and less students choose to go home. This could be because of limited time to travel, studying for finals or the fact that the Egg Bowl is held on Thanksgiving Day. Seeing the rivalry game between the University of Mississippi and MSU at home in Davis Wade Stadium is hard to pass up for many Bulldog students.
Elizabeth Orr, a first semester grad student studying early intervention from Summerville, Tennessee, chose to stay in Starkville this year. Because she was already staying in town for the Egg Bowl, Orr chose to stay in Starkville for the full day, and had a unique Thanksgiving holiday experience.
Orr spent her time Thanksgiving-hopping with her friend Chatham Kennedy, a student in the University of Alabama’s Distance Learning program, in which she is earning her master’s degree in social work.
Kennedy had Thanksgiving plans change last minute and decided to stay in town for the Egg Bowl. When she and her friends started discussing who would be in town, that’s when the Thanksgiving-hopping with Orr came into play.
“All my friends were like, ‘Come to ours, come to ours,’ and I ended up cancelling on someone because I was like, ‘We can’t go to four Thanksgivings,'” Kennedy said. “We just have mutual friends and she came over and we were both the only people out of our friend group whose families weren’t in town.”
Orr and Kennedy spent the morning watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and then started their rounds at friends’ family gatherings.
“It definitely felt like home away from home, in the sense that the whole community that does celebrate thanksgiving there, invited us in and included us in their thanksgiving,” Orr said. “It was really sweet and fun.”
While the Egg Bowl was the motivation behind a lot of students staying in town for Thanksgiving, there are also a few students who choose not to leave Starkville for an extended period of time over the winter break as well.
Paige Hunt, Starkville’s director of tourism through the Starkville Greater Development Partnership, shared some upcoming events in town that would be available for students who decide to stay in town to attend, as well as those who are leaving to be able to see before the break begins.
Some of the events she shared were the Starkville Christmas Parade in downtown Starkville, which happened on Monday, as well as Starkville’s 49th annual Holiday Bazaar, which took place at the Mill Conference Center Dec. 1-2.
These, Hunt mentioned, are great for students and families alike, with the parade being a fun activity and the bazaar serving as a way to get some holiday shopping done while supporting local artisans in the area that both locals and students call home.
Friday, the Budweiser Clydesdales are coming to Starkville. They will make a route through downtown as well, and public viewing of them will be available at Fire Station Park beginning at 3 p.m., with a parade following that.
With activities like these jumpstarting the holiday season and many more to come, students who choose to spend the break in Starkville will have plenty of opportunities to get involved locally with activities and shopping.
Hunt shared that Starkville is a great place to spend the holidays, and that families of students should feel welcome to spend the seasonal time together in the quaint college town.
“There’s definitely shopping and dining and things to do,” Hunt said. “And obviously, it sounds pretty cliche, but there’s some really great Christmas lights that folks put up, and it could be fun to drive around and look at Christmas lights. We have all new Christmas decorations in downtown Starkville. It really does look like a Hallmark movie, it’s beautiful.”
