Ripon College Days

Dickens of a Christmas was too cute this year. For those of you who seemingly impossibly do not know what Dickens is, it is Ripon's Christmas kick-off, a down-home, disgustingly cutesy celebration of the holiday season. Most of the store fronts have living windows that tell the story of Scrooge's realization that the commercial monster of Christmas is just a-OK. Strangely, I noticed the Mansion on Main's window remained blank, when I thought it would have been quite festive to have Starr and Candy the strippers displaying some critical part of the Scrooge story. Rip-N-Tatz had the ghost of Christmas-yet-to-come window, and I think that was fitting because you can't exactly give a tattoo parlor the "Tiny Tim will live!" window with Tiny Tim covered in "I Heart Ebeneezer" tattoos.

This Dickens event always gets my friends and I officially into that Christmas mood. You know what mood I am talking about: that "Everything is going to be just fine because egg nog, Christmas cookies and Santa are going to make everything all right!" kind of spirit. Granted, it's a complete and utter lie, because that creep Santa Clause squeezing down my chimney sure as heck ain't gonna stop the fact that I have 3 papers, 2 tests and a quest for the Holy Grail to complete before I return home next week, but it's just the principle of the thing I'm talking about here.

This season is one of great change on campus. Many of us are leaving to either graduate early or to go abroad. I mean, this campus is going to have a giant black void in society when I go to Spain this January, and I'm trying to help transition this campus by teaching my young followers how to be gossip masters. (I am so humble, aren't I, dear reader?) Friends leaving for an extended time is hard, but there is still something about this time of year that just helps ease that pain. I don't know if it's professors cramming so much extra work down our throats this next week and a half makes us too busy, or if the falling snow serves as a blanket of denial, but something has kept us from being too swept up. (But I will still bet I will be blubbering harder than I did at the end of "Rent" by the time this semester is done!)

Great Hall is decorated to keep us in that happy Christmas mood with enchanted trees, story-reading President Joyces and best of all, delicious baked treats from the community (during finals that is). Nothing says stress buster like ditching studying at 3 a.m. to go play Scrabble in Great Hall. Sadoff's sloping hill beckons us to caress its sides with dining hall lunch trays and plastic mattresses. Dollar store garlands drape themselves across our residence hall doors as we can't exactly afford Macy's-grade decorations. These factors heighten the level of Christmas-y wonder around campus and help us get by during what could be trying times.

One last note: I use Christmas to describe this time because that is what I am most familiar with since I come from a Catholic "row ye scurvys" background. By no means is it just Christ's supposed birthing on a former pagan holiday that I suggest to be the only source of joy this season. Jewish traditions, Muslim faith, wiccan ritual all contribute unique energy to this time of year, making the calendar passage into winter all the more enjoyable on campus. (And here my friends say I can't be PC!)

So, celebrate and rejoice this holiday season dear readers! With as hard as we all work throughout the year, we deserve a time to relax and get back to what is most important: family, friends and wild Christmas parties. It has been an incredible year of looking at Life in the Bowl with all of you, and I cannot wait to return to campus' hollow, sacred grounds and lovingly chide all our silliness and sassiness once more.

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