Being that the scheduling gods just aren’t on my side (two finals and two papers all on Tuesday are just the beginning of my suffering) combined with the fact that stuffy noses and horrible headaches have recently become my new best friends, I can confidently say that I’m very ready for the upcoming break.
However, I can’t help but think that I’ve become more than a little jaded from this pseudo-independent college lifestyle I’ve been leading since 2005. No curfews, going out on school nights, terribly irregular sleeping schedules, no one to regulate television-watching habits or Internet usage – it’s a tremendously easy gap to fall into.
All this contemplation has led me to one conclusion: Cool is out. More importantly, cheesy is in!
Let’s be realistic: Not everyone can be cool. If cool is for a select few and the majority spends their time forcing themselves to like something (i.e. certain music of the “indie” or “underground” variety), people may as well have fun and look ridiculous while doing it.
So this holiday season, regale in the blatantly inauthentic. The beauty of this time of year – you know, second to generosity and the goodness of mankind and stuff – is the sickly sentimental warm fuzzies that it can produce. In other words, get more excited about the holiday of your choice than a college freshman at her first themed frat party of the quarter.
Start off with some sick holiday beats from your favorite pop hit makers. For those who are taking baby-steps toward total festivity assimilation, several artists with some semblance of indie credibility have made their own contributions to the holiday genre. Unlikely candidates for making seasonal songs include Pedro the Lion, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Gatsby’s American Dream.
But I figure, why not go all the way with the merry-making? Winter is always an opportune time to bump some guilty pleasures like Celine Dion, Whitney Houston or Johnny Mathis. If you’re feeling extra cheery, get yourself a karaoke DVD so you can belt out your own rendition of classics like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas (Is You).“
Of course, the holidays just wouldn’t be the same without some sort of pictorial documentation to capture these Kodak moments. There are many variations to the art of cheesy family portraits – Christmas trees, floral arrangements, fireplaces or a dinner table full of food are all potential backgrounds for such pictures. My own relatives would arrange my cousins and me on the stairs in ascending order of age, with the youngest in the front and the oldest in the back.
Another key component of such portraits is the holiday garb. It used to be that my mom would have to force me into those velvet dresses and annoyingly itchy white tights or thick-knit holiday sweaters. But now that I’ve matured and grown oblivious of any probable course of embarrassment, I don such attire with enthusiasm.
My underlying point: Have fun. Even if it used to be that such activities were strictly obligatory when you were younger, you still had fun doing it. Revel in the cheesiness that the holidays lend themselves so well to – because really, when else are you going to do it?
RACHEL FILIPINAS is currently bumpin‘ “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays” by ‘N Sync. She’s also on the brink of illness. Send your own music recommendations, plenty of tissue boxes and distractions from studying to rmfilipinas@ucdavis.edu.
