Holiday Joys

Dear Holiday Worn Readers (That's right, all five of you),

Tonight is a night for a series of otherwise incoherent topics that are only connected by my flurry of holiday season experiences. If you're looking for a strictly linear storyline, read Harry Potter.

Topic 1: Home for the Holidays
Many people return to their place of origin over the holidays. Whilst they're here, they wish to rekindle old flames of friendship and engage in merriment that is unhindered by the stresses of independence, homesickness, children, or laundry. While reconnecting is wonderful in theory, it runs into the constraint of "Ohmigod-I'm-only-here-for-two-weeks-and-I-have-to-see-my-friends-but-at-least-3-days-of-the-break-must-be-devoted-to-my-family". Given this, some friendly neighborhood bloggers end up going to 4 shindigs in 2 days forgoing 2 more, visiting an old school's holiday feast, singing in 2 concerts, recording a CD, planning a retreat, and hanging out with every social group imaginable from choir geek to lifelong friends. Does this cause shear exhaustion and social fatigue you might ask. Answer: No. When you the venues are engaging, the "friend time" meter fills faster than the "I wish I could nap" meter. All the same, I'm thinking a new schedule in which schools around the nation periodically release their kids on break would be easier on my social calendar. As it is, the world doesn't revolve around social hermits with agendas so I guess 1 or 2 events with each group will have to do.

Topic 2: Jesus was born when?
I don't know the exact date of Jesus' birth, nor do I care to look it up, but I've gotten answers everywhere from January 6 to April. The point is, he was not born of Christmas and we just happen to celebrate his birthday on December 25. Does this diminish the significance of celebration? It shouldn't matter WHEN you celebrate something if you take the time to make meaning of it. This made me wonder though...Is there a reason why Christmas replaced the winter solstice and is celebrated in the dead of winter as opposed to when it might be more historically accurate?

I supposed a few things:
1)We as humans may have always felt seasonal affective disorder and to counteract that people naturally created celebrations in winter to make up for the gloom caused by absence of sunlight. Christmas would then have been set in winter to account for this natural glum, and since it conveniently swept a pagan celebration to the side, the pioneering Christians were like, "Yippee!". And honestly, don't you feel better with artificial, colored light blinking out of every window?
2)If folks weren't that intentional about treating their depression, there could've been a fluke and some idiot wrote the birthday down wrong, forever making Jesus laugh about his followers (cultural or religious) commemorating him on a day completely irrelevant to his life.
3)If both these are wrong, then people may not have been intentional in any capacity and just celebrated 'cause it made them happy. They didn't bother fussing over when they got to halt everything and eat ham.

Topic 3: Taylor Swift Can't Sing...Ever
As an ever so cool sound guy/musician informed me, auto-tune technology was first developed for live shows. It only later dawned on producers that they could make artists sound better in the studio too and thus open the gates for marketing "artists" who never sound good ever, but have some other appeal like looking pretty or something. This information more than ever makes me appreciate when someone messes up live. If someone loves the art enough to be vulnerable and put themselves out there to perform without handicaps, it doesn't matter that they went sharp, flat or said "plahzit" instead of "closet". They're doing it for you and usually, they're better than those techno, cheater losers anyway.
I did realize one benefit of auto-tune today when I watched it work its evil power on my voice: It can help you really scrutinize your voice. Basic lesson- auto-tune draws a line representing your voice and another one with it's edited version. The natural lines are more squiggly up and down meaning they fluctuate between pitches more either due to vibrato or suckiness. The auto-tune line is more compressed so as to exact a pitch. What this visual helps you see is when and on what notes you have pitch problems, how often you slide, and how crazy your vibrato is. My vibrato at one point spanned a minor 3rd. A freaking minor 3rd! Auto-tune indiscriminately "fixes" all these things (sometimes with terrible results). Whether or not you like them stylistically is your choice, but at least you can really see what you're doing.
In case you were wondering about the title of this topic: Taylor Swift is auto-tuned in every setting. This means she can never sing. Ever. That's her story. Baby just say yes.

Topic 4: Naughty or Nice?
Sometimes perfectly nice people surprise you with how vulgar they can be. I don't mean this in a bad way. It's hilarious when they release their inner Russell Brand. The incongruous nature of it just gives toilet humor an extra punch. But my actual point is that I don't expect them to be amused by dirty jokes or even think of them readily and relentlessly.
My friends and I comprise a table of the following religious affiliations: 5 nice, disciplined Christians, 2 Mormons (technically Christian but they actually have a specific denominational identity! What a concept. Being sure of what you believe in), and an agnostic. The agnostic would presumably be most prone to dick jokes. But, trying to be polite, they don't initiate a trip down to the gutter. However, after practically swimming in it for several rounds of sexually charged question and equally sexual but non-responsive answer, all bets were off.
I don't know why this is funny for them. It may be because of the previously mentioned incongruous nature of it. Or good behavior in action may allow them to joke freely about it in a game. Or, the simplest answer, potty humor is potty humor and just funny to everyone no matter who they are.


You may not have deemed these topics worthy of your ponderance. I myself questioned whether or not I should be using time thinking about them. I did seem to reach rather undecided conclusions that leaned more towards general humanity as an answer as opposed to gritty, specific, situational causes.

Pfff, enjoy your holidays and may they be filled with more thought unencumbered joy than mine.

Indecisively,
Jamin