David Sedaris Saves Christmas!

Christmas Eve is a weird holiday. I always feel like there is a obligation to spend time with family, but there are really no specifics events for this day, besides a church service in the evening. I love my family lots, but spending an entire day in their company can get a little tiresome. So normally the family attempts some strained interaction for a couple hours or so, whether it be in jigsaw puzzling or Monopoly playing, then inevitably everyone goes off on their own to read or watch TV or engage in some other solitary activity. The solitary activities are often not at all enjoyable, however, since there is always a lingering feeling of guilt over not engaging with the rest of the family. We compensate instead by all being antisocial together. Like, we all sit in the same room and read or something. Or play four individual games of Solitaire.. just kidding, it has never gotten that bad. This Christmas Eve was different though. My dad had gotten a new television for the family room (Christmas gift to... himself?) and spent a large part of the day trying to set it up, his struggle providing some amusement for the rest of the family. When everything was finally connected, Dad showed us the family some of the cool features of the TV, like the internet connection. My sister suggested we use it to watch youtube videos, a great idea in theory, but soon proved to be quite troublesome when no one could agree on what videos to watch. Christmas themed? Funny? Cat related? So many options!  After some serious contemplation on my part I remembered a David Sedaris youtube video I had watched after we read one of his short stories in AP 11. I thought the family would enjoy it too,  and we watched (well mostly listened) to a comedy reading he had performed. It was titled "6 to 8 Black Men" and focused on the Dutch Christmas traditions, and by the end of it the family had reduced to tears of laughter.  (If you have approximately 5 minutes and 54 seconds to spare, I highly recommend clicking that link!) We continued on through the entire collection of David Sedaris youtube videos, all of them amazingly funny. We spent a good hour together, laughing, overall just having a great time.  AP English has affected me greatly, of course, from improving writing ability to causing me to think deeper about literature, but my favorite part of AP English is the amount of literature Ms. Serensky has exposed us to over the years. We must have read at least fifty different authors so far, from all the poems,  the Fifty Great Essays pieces, the novels, even from the segments we read in the AP multiple choice practice. Although this is not a fact I think about very often, I greatly appreciate it when I can use my knowledge from AP English to bring my family together for an hour or two.

Dutch Santa with his helpers