Intermittent Holiday Joy

I’ll tell you what. You find me some boughs of holly, and I’ll be happy to deck some halls.

Now that we’ve put Thanksgiving in our rear-view mirror and no one seems to really care that the Finnish people celebrate Independence Day on December 6th, YAB turns its attention towards Christmas. Now as for as preparations go, the YAB desk will most likely have to put much of it on hold, as the Thanksgiving holiday set us back a bit, but while we did not take advantage of Black Friday or sit on Santa’s lap, we’re aware that Christmas is here. Need proof? Just listen to the radio.

I don’t know how one would decorate a blog for Christmas. I suppose I could screw with the colors or the fonts, or once and for all figure out the world of pictures. Maybe there would be a secret hyperlink in each post that if accidentally clicked, your laptop would fire a candy cane at your head. But let’s face it. Someone will be caught sleeping while reading and lawsuits aren’t exactly what I want for Christmas. (Although “You Got Caned” has a comical ring to it…) I guess if you can’t holiday-decorate a blog, you could always blog about holiday-decorating.

The year was 2001, and I was in my second-to-last period of final exams for my entire life (assuming that I don’t go to grad school…damn.) As the weather turned colder on the outside, the inside of my dorm room was as plain as could be. Scattered textbooks, laundry-in-waiting, Chris Nordberg wasting time on our couch – nothing extraordinary in the least. As we returned from Thanksgiving break, Spud and I both found ourselves full of holiday cheer and decided it was time to make sure all passers-by knew it. We needed to decorate.

The Christmas decoration of a dormitory room is highly limited to due a lack of money, time, and square footage. Most people who undertake such a task normally limit themselves to some cut-out snowflakes on the door or perhaps a couple of stockings hanging from the closet. In a room that had no place for a tree, and there were rules about installing a fireplace on the 3rd floor of a 4 floor building, we quickly realized that standard indoor Christmas deco wasn’t in the cards. But walking the aisles of the Williamsburg Target gave us an idea.

(If you are a former RA of Chris Condon, please stop reading now.)

In a 21’ x 13’ room, there is a perimeter of 68 feet around the wall edges. When we decided that the best way to celebrate the holiday season was by lining the ceiling with icicle lights, that number became very important. For those not in the know, icicle lights are the glowing white Christmas lights that hang down in vertical strands of 5-8 individual bulbs, giving the effect of icicles hanging from a roof’s edge (assuming you have radioactive snow.) Starting at the sink (always a great place for electricity), the seven ten-foot strands were woven in and out of the ceiling tiles to hide much of the base wiring and leaving the illusion of the icicles themselves. This continued all the way around the room.

Because of the many dorm room staples we had around the perimeter of the room (beds, desks, Casio keyboards), this wasn’t exactly easy. But once we had come full circle, it was time to light up our dorm room with a warm Christmas glow. Some 840 individual sparks ready to ring in the holiday season in a perpetual light of joy. All there’s left to do is plug in the strand to the outlet and…

They blink. ALL of them.

Every single strand blinks on and off in every five seconds or so. And not all at the same time either. It’s like they all have minds of their own. And no two minds have any interest in thinking alike.

Sure, we got used to it, and managed to study for finals in varying intensities of illumination. I think I was even able to sleep with them on. But for any visitors to Camm 244 that year, we had a holiday message for them:

Merry Seizure Christmas from Chris and Spud.