2002 was a year to remember. It was the year that the United States entered Afghanistan, the year that the Beltway Sniper attacks terrorized the east coast, and the year that President George W. Bush created Homeland Security. However, it was also the year of an extremely important event for students in Fairfax County Public Schools; it was the year of the sixteen day winter break.

Ever since that fateful year, winter break has been thirteen days long, until now. This year, due to the fact that December 23^rd is a Monday, Fairfax County students will receive another sixteen day winter break which ends on Monday January 6^th. Following this long winter vacation, the next generation of students to experience this anomaly will be in 2019.

This year, students will be taking advantage of the additional days to complete things that they have been meaning to do for a long time.

“I will eat a lot of food and do college apps,” said Senior Lindsey Hogge.

Senior Addison Speer said, “I will hang with the family and go ice skating and possibly build a snow tunnel.”

During the year of 2010, the nation was experiencing crisis after crisis. On January 12^th, the Haitian Earthquake killed 230,000 people, on February 27^th Chile was hit with an 8.8 magnitude earthquake, on April 15^th the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull launched volcanic ash into Europe and on April 20^th the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded killing eleven people and causing a massive oil discharge in the Gulf of Mexico. In that same year, Fairfax County students had only twelve days of winter break.