Latest / onefjef / Looking for a Good Christmas

Transcript

Looking for a Good Christmas · onefjef

• 0:01
  My name is Jeffrey and I am going to sing Jingle Bells.
• 0:05
  Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.
• 0:08
  Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.
• 0:11
  Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.
• 0:17
  Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.
• 0:20
  Jeffy has a little cold so if he coughs don't worry.
• 0:24
  This is Alison again.
• 0:25
  forgot to clap.
• 0:31
  Like the audience did.
• 0:35
  Ho, ho, ho, this.
• 0:39
  is episode 30 of onefjef.
• 0:41
  The number 30 stands out because it works both practically and symbolically.
• 0:46
  It's highly divisible, which is why time and geometry rely on it, and it also carries meaning.
• 0:51
  In numerology, it reduces to three the number of expression and creativity, with zero amplifying that voice, while Tarot links it to the Empress and the act of making ideas
• 1:03
  real.
• 1:03
  Together, 30 marks a threshold where flexibility turns into responsibility and creativity.
• 1:09
  gets used, not just imagined.
• 1:11
  Hello again my friends.
• 1:13
  Merry Christmas, happy holidays, so forth and so on.
• 1:17
  I hope you were all donning your gayest apparel.
• 1:20
  I hope that your true love did in fact give you eight maids a milking and that you have enough cows to keep them busy and enough receptacles to hold all that milk.
• 1:33
  And most of all, I hope that the Lord has come.
• 1:38
  It is two days before Christmas.
• 1:40
  I am here at my mom's house in Westlake, Ohio, trying to locate the Christmas spirit wherever it may be hiding.
• 1:48
  Have you found it?
• 1:49
  I hope you have.
• 1:51
  Yeah, Christmas is weird.
• 1:53
  Christmas is heavy, but Christmas is also a solid excuse to go out of your way to find joy.
• 2:03
  The ironic thing about Christmas is it's oftentimes one of the hardest.
• 2:06
  times of the year to find joy.
• 2:08
  Because it's so complicated.
• 2:11
  And it's also raining outside.
• 2:13
  And like, if it's not going to be a white Christmas, that's fine.
• 2:17
  But don't rain, right?
• 2:19
  Don't rain.
• 2:19
  You hear me, Mother Nature?
• 2:22
  I got my eye on you.
• 2:24
  Anyway, speaking of joy, something that's given me joy in this last year is starting this podcast and slowly growing an audience.
• 2:34
  of human beings, some of whom have chosen to join the Patreon page and support the podcast with a little bit of a donation and also get a bunch of extra cool stuff.
• 2:43
  So thank you to all of my continuing Patreon subscribers.
• 2:47
  I truly appreciate you.
• 2:49
  You help support the podcast.
• 2:51
  For those of you who have not taken the plunge into the Patreon pool, may I encourage you this holiday season to go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up.
• 3:00
  For as as $5 a month, can help support the podcast, help me, and enter a world of gumdrops, candy canes, and cheese sandwiches.
• 3:12
  So everyone, please go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up in whatever way you would like.
• 3:19
  I've been recording random thoughts about Christmas for the last couple of weeks and
• 3:24
  That's about what this episode's gonna be.
• 3:26
  I've also dug out a few things from my archive, so hopefully that's also exciting.
• 3:31
  And as always, thank you for listening.
• 3:35
  Thank you for being here.
• 3:37
  Here's me in my car, driving home for Christmas.
• 3:44
  I'm driving north on I-71 heading to the west side of Cleveland to my mother's house to celebrate the holidays.
• 3:54
  Sister and my nephew will be coming up.
• 3:57
  I'm always in a good mood when I am driving up to Cleveland for the holidays and today is no exception.
• 4:02
  I'm in a pleasant mood.
• 4:03
  The sun is setting, there's not a cloud in the sky.
• 4:06
  Unleaded gas is only $2.45 at the Flying J.
• 4:11
  What more can you ask from this life?
• 4:13
  Anyway...
• 4:14
  feel like the internet has probably ruined the Santa Claus myth for lot of kids.
• 4:21
  I don't think that you could be using the internet and still believe in Santa Claus.
• 4:24
  Although the internet doesn't really go out of its way to say Santa doesn't exist.
• 4:28
  It's actually pretty good about that.
• 4:29
  It's just if you did a search for it.
• 4:31
  Like if you Google, is Santa Claus real?
• 4:34
  I wonder what you'd get.
• 4:35
  I'm guessing no.
• 4:36
  I'm guessing that's what you'd get.
• 4:37
  No.
• 4:38
  No.com.
• 4:40
  Or if you ask Chachipiti, it'd just be like a long, long thing about the origins of Santa Claus.
• 4:44
  But no, Santa Claus isn't real.
• 4:46
  Santa Claus isn't real as a literal man who delivers presents in one night.
• 4:50
  But the character is based on a real historical figure, Saint Nicholas, known for generosity.
• 4:56
  While the magic isn't factual, the tradition is real in the sense that people collectively keep it alive to create joy, generosity and wonder.
• 5:04
  I remember believing in Santa, you know, and I remember thinking it was remarkable that
• 5:10
  He could do that, like deliver presents to everybody, all the kids in the world in one night on a sleigh that flies.
• 5:19
  You know, don't get me wrong, it's a flying sleigh.
• 5:21
  But still, that's a lift.
• 5:23
  Has there ever been anybody who's tried to explain how that works?
• 5:26
  He'd have to have access to technology that we currently don't have, some sort of alien technology in order to get that much product delivered in that short of a time.
• 5:39
  I mean, you must have a very good logistics team.
• 5:41
  Why is the government not getting the technology from Santa?
• 5:46
  You would think the military would be interested in whatever technology Santa has to pull off that stunt in one night.
• 5:54
  So the argument breaks down pretty quickly with the Santa thing.
• 5:58
  But there was a while, I mean, I remember it like putting out cookies and a note for Santa and Santa would write back.
• 6:04
  And it was like, really?
• 6:05
  This is Santa was here?
• 6:07
  And my parents did a good job of like, making us believe it.
• 6:10
  Like doing things to make it seem like, you know.
• 6:12
  Easter Bunny too, actually.
• 6:14
  I remember believing in the Easter Bunny.
• 6:17
  I don't even know what the story is there.
• 6:18
  Is that similar to Santa, but you're just hopping?
• 6:21
  In which case, that's also super impressive.
• 6:25
  Should look into that too.
• 6:27
  Steroids, probably.
• 6:28
  Easter Bunny's on steroids.
• 6:30
  But yeah, Santa Claus.
• 6:32
  I dressed up as Santa Claus one time.
• 6:35
  It was when I was living in Korea and it was like, you know, two days before Christmas or whatever, right before the kids got let out.
• 6:42
  Yeah, they had me wear the Santa costume.
• 6:44
  Because I guess I'm the token white guy and Santa, you know, and most of the things is white.
• 6:49
  I think Santa's white in Korea too, right?
• 6:52
  Or is he Korean?
• 6:54
  I think he's white everywhere.
• 6:56
  Not saying he should be, just saying he probably is.
• 7:00
  But yeah, I dressed up like Santa and they had me do pictures with all the students.
• 7:04
  So I have some of these funny pictures of me dressed as Santa with a bunch of Korean children around me.
• 7:10
  Weird.
• 7:12
  And I'm a skinny Santa too.
• 7:13
  Like it's not, I'm not really pulling it off because I mean I look ridiculous in this costume.
• 7:19
  So skinny like it was hanging off me.
• 7:21
  The beard kind of worked but even the beard was bigger than my face so I don't know.
• 7:27
  But it's the thought that counts.
• 7:38
  was in high school.
• 7:40
  I was in the choir.
• 7:41
  One year we, during the holiday season, we went to a shopping mall to sing in this giant Christmas tree.
• 7:50
  Like, it was like a Christmas tree with like a platform so you could stand on it.
• 7:56
  Afterwards we found out we weren't even supposed to be in the tree and it was actually rather unsafe for us to be up there.
• 8:01
  And frankly, I remember it swaying quite a bit.
• 8:04
  I don't think it was meant to hold the amount of weight.
• 8:08
  Anyway, I was in the top part of the tree and as a joke, I just kind of took one of the light bulbs off the tree.
• 8:16
  I being a dumb kid.
• 8:17
  I was just taking a light bulb off a tree.
• 8:19
  People did laugh.
• 8:21
  So I don't know if it was the next day or the same day, but got back to high school after this.
• 8:27
  And our choir teacher was a cool guy.
• 8:30
  Everybody liked him.
• 8:31
  He got along with everybody.
• 8:32
  He was like one of the guys or whatever.
• 8:37
  And so I showed him the light bulb that I'd taken, thinking he would think it was funny, but he did not think it was funny.
• 8:43
  He was angry.
• 8:45
  And he made me go back to the mall and give the light bulb back and apologize.
• 8:53
  Which, as a 52 year old looking back, it seems like an excessive punishment really.
• 9:00
  It was one light bulb.
• 9:01
  Like, maybe I'm just defensive about it, but
• 9:04
  I really don't think that the punishment was quite equal to the quote unquote crime.
• 9:10
  But anyway, I went back to the mall and I went to the office and said, hey, I stole a light bulb from your tree that had hundreds of light bulbs in it.
• 9:23
  I didn't say that part, but it did.
• 9:25
  And they said, thank you.
• 9:27
  And then I left.
• 9:29
  And that was it.
• 9:31
  I should have been like, you know, your tree is a death trap and the thing is going to collapse and people are going to die.
• 9:37
  That's what I should have said.
• 9:39
  And then here's the light bulb, but I didn't do that.
• 9:42
  Hindsight.
• 9:42
  It's always easier to come up with a good line afterwards.
• 9:46
  So that happened on one Christmas.
• 10:00
  My grandmother used to hate the song, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.
• 10:07
  When that song came out, it was a huge, huge hit.
• 10:10
  It was all over the radio.
• 10:11
  We all thought it was hilarious.
• 10:12
  I was probably 10, 11, 12 years old.
• 10:15
  Just a hilarious song.
• 10:16
  I mean, it's still kind of funny.
• 10:18
  It's a little dated, I think, but it is still kind of funny.
• 10:21
  But Grandma, she did not, she did not like that song.
• 10:24
  I I suppose for obvious reasons, but it almost seems too on the nose, doesn't it?
• 10:29
  Grandma liked Alf quite a bit as well, the alien.
• 10:33
  When I was in Russia, when I was in my 20s, I don't know if it was Moscow, I think it was Moscow.
• 10:39
  If there was one channel I remember that played Alf, kind of like all day, but like dubbed in Russian.
• 10:47
  So it'd be like, Zdravsvu Te Vinny.
• 10:51
  If you remember the show, Alfie used to be like, hey Vinnie.
• 10:55
  So drasfutiy means hello, hey in Russian.
• 10:59
  Do you understand?
• 11:00
  I don't need to paint you a roadmap.
• 11:04
  Years after Alf had kind of gone off the cultural radar in the United States, it was still going strong in Russia.
• 11:12
  Good for Alf.
• 11:13
  Interesting thing about that show is it just kind of ended with Alf getting taken away by the FBI and that was it.
• 11:19
  They plan to do another season, but it got canceled.
• 11:22
  So the end of the show is just like the FBI coming and taking Alf away.
• 11:27
  And that's it.
• 11:28
  That's the end of the show.
• 11:29
  That's the end of the show.
• 11:31
  I wonder how my grandma felt about that one.
• 11:34
  Alf, I'm going to find a good Christmas this year.
• 11:38
  You know, I'm going to find it.
• 11:40
  I'm going to look in my head and I'm going to focus on it.
• 11:44
  I'm going to tell myself, you find that good Christmas.
• 11:48
  And I wish that for all of you as well.
• 11:51
  Let's all do our best to take a deep breath this Christmas.
• 11:56
  Close our eyes and focus our best on finding a good Christmas.
• 12:02
  Not that you won't find it either way, but if you're actively looking for it, I think maybe it'll be easier to find.
• 12:08
  When I was younger, there was so much build up to Christmas.
• 12:13
  The advent calendars read countdown open one every day and it's boring.
• 12:18
  Like the ones that we had, I'd be so excited to open one of these little doors and it would just be another picture of like Jesus or something.
• 12:26
  And now they have candy and stuff in it, which is better for sure.
• 12:30
  But like, why was I so excited to open these little advent calendar doors?
• 12:34
  Me and my sister would fight over who could open the doors that day.
• 12:38
  Because it was exciting.
• 12:40
  Because Christmas was coming.
• 12:41
  Because Santa was coming.
• 12:43
  It's a hype machine, the advent calendar.
• 12:45
  It's essentially what it is.
• 12:47
  And a good one at that.
• 12:49
  I wonder if kids still get that excited about Christmas.
• 12:53
  Because honestly, now that I think back on it, when I was a kid, it was really just like commercialism on steroids, right?
• 13:00
  Every commercial would be Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.
• 13:03
  They used to send out the Christmas catalogs.
• 13:05
  You could go through it and be like, I want this and this and this and this and this and these all these having these things will make me happy.
• 13:11
  I didn't say that, but I mean, that's the implication.
• 13:14
  And they did make me happy for a period of time.
• 13:16
  A lot of them did.
• 13:17
  Yeah.
• 13:19
  trying to think of like the best Christmas gift I ever got.
• 13:22
  I don't know.
• 13:23
  I was very excited when I got a computer for the first time.
• 13:26
  I think I cried when I got a computer, which is kind of embarrassing to admit to, but I was young and I really wanted a computer.
• 13:35
  Little did I know that the damage that these machines would inflict upon the world 40 years later.
• 13:43
  I wouldn't change a thing.
• 13:44
  I wouldn't change a thing.
• 13:47
  Would I?
• 13:50
  What reality are we in anyway?
• 14:07
  Christmas in Hollis by Run DMC uh is a banger, as the kids say.
• 14:13
  And I say now.
• 14:14
  I think we're all allowed to say banger now.
• 14:16
  And not just because it was in Die Hard, that's where it was introduced.
• 14:20
  The Mr.
• 14:21
  Hankey, the Christmas Poo is also a classic Christmas song.
• 14:25
  Mr.
• 14:26
  Hankey in general, the South Park episode about the talking piece of poo who saves Christmas is honestly one of the funniest and best.
• 14:36
  Christmas specials of all time.
• 14:38
  Mr.
• 14:39
  Hankey sings and dances and he says, and he teaches everybody the real spirit of Christmas.
• 14:49
  A piece of poo.
• 14:51
  So check that one out if you haven't seen that one because it's a Christmas classic.
• 14:56
  The Christmas song, Nat King Cole, the strings at the beginning, you know, gets me.
• 15:02
  Also the picture like chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
• 15:06
  I don't know what that looks like.
• 15:07
  I'm assuming it's like a pot or something or, you know, some sort of a pot or a pan with chestnuts in it over an open fire.
• 15:15
  I don't eat nuts.
• 15:15
  So I have no idea what, that is like.
• 15:18
  Has anybody ever had chestnuts roasting over an open fire?
• 15:22
  If you have had chestnuts roasting on an open fire and eaten them, please email the podcast at onefjefpod@gmail.com.
• 15:30
  I really want to know.
• 15:32
  I would submit that.
• 15:34
  Very, very few people have done that.
• 15:37
  However, the image of it, the idea of it, you get the vibe.
• 15:42
  You get it.
• 15:42
  Why is that?
• 15:43
  It's strange, isn't it?
• 15:44
  Because chestnuts could taste terrible.
• 15:46
  Maybe you're not even supposed to cook chestnuts on an open fire.
• 15:49
  Maybe it's like makes them taste terrible, but it doesn't matter because you hear the line and you're like, chestnuts.
• 15:55
  Yeah, roasting, open fire, cozy.
• 15:58
  But then Jack Frost is nipping at your nose.
• 16:00
  So you're outside because it's an open fire.
• 16:03
  All right, we've established that.
• 16:05
  Yuletide carols being sung by a choir and folks dressed up like Eskimos.
• 16:10
  Alright, I mean, if you really examine it, I'm not really crazy about all the lyrics there, but it's the sound of the song that really gets you.
• 16:18
  I've always liked Feliz Navidad quite a bit, which means Merry Christmas in Spanish.
• 16:23
  Doing some Spanish lessons, doing Duolingo, so you're welcome.
• 16:28
  One time, it was my cousin's wedding.
• 16:30
  My cousin Brian was getting married.
• 16:31
  This was, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago.
• 16:34
  And it was at a hotel, or we were staying at a hotel.
• 16:37
  There was a hotel bar and we were hanging out.
• 16:40
  A lot of the cousins were hanging out in the bar.
• 16:42
  think most of them actually.
• 16:44
  With my uncle, Joe.
• 16:46
  We were all sitting at the bar and there was a karaoke thing going on.
• 16:50
  So Uncle Joe, I think he said he would buy everybody shots or buy me a shot if I went up and sang something.
• 16:58
  And it was, think, July.
• 16:59
  I don't know what month they got married in, but I'm pretty sure it was the summertime.
• 17:03
  but I did Feliz Navidad.
• 17:21
  the funny part about the performance of it in the hotel is that I didn't know many of the words aside from Feliz Navidad.
• 17:28
  So I kind of just mumbled through.
• 17:46
  tore the place down.
• 17:55
  had the men singing on their own, I had the women singing on their own.
• 18:12
  if I did it it probably would be amazing.
• 18:14
  I'm much better at Spanish.
• 18:16
  m
• 18:50
  Simply having a wonderful Christmas time.
• 18:57
  Simply having a wonderful Christmas time.
• 19:03
  Simply having a wonderful Christmas time.
• 19:11
  A lot of suicides to that song around the holidays.
• 19:16
  Because I think that's the only response you could have.
• 19:19
  if you aren't having a wonderful Christmas time and you hear that song come on.
• 19:23
  And if you're working in a hula hands in Northeastern Ohio and you hear that song come on and you hear it, mm, five to 10 times every night maybe, it's a form of torture.
• 19:40
  And don't get me wrong, the Beatles were great.
• 19:44
  But that song, that Paul McCartney nightmare of a song,
• 19:48
  There's nobody who can convince me that that's a good Christmas song.
• 19:54
  Anyway.
• 20:07
  was just driving home from therapy and there was this story on NPR about holiday parties and it made me think of this holiday party that I went to in New York.
• 20:19
  I was working at this, it was like a production company.
• 20:23
  They did like basically like man on the street interviews for like research for companies, you know, they'd ask people on the street what they thought of X or Y brand and yada yada
• 20:35
  yada.
• 20:35
  It was really weird.
• 20:37
  place to work.
• 20:38
  uh But it was thriving.
• 20:41
  The company was doing very well.
• 20:43
  Anyway, I think it was the first holiday party that I went to of theirs.
• 20:47
  It was something else.
• 20:48
  I took my girlfriend at the time.
• 20:50
  It was at the office, which was in Midtown Manhattan.
• 20:54
  And they had a, I mean, a beyond full bar, like every kind of liquor you could possibly imagine.
• 21:02
  They had a spread of food unlike anything you've ever seen.
• 21:06
  You know, they had a photo booth with different costumes and so forth like everybody has.
• 21:10
  But then the piece de resistance, if you will, was that they had rented a, one of these, m it's like a game where you stand inside this booth.
• 21:21
  It's like a money booth.
• 21:22
  You stand inside this glass booth and money blows around and you try to grab as much as you can in like a minute or something.
• 21:32
  You know, you drew, they drew names to see who could get to go in there.
• 21:37
  I never seen anything like that ever again at any party.
• 21:40
  I didn't even know you could rent those.
• 21:42
  My girlfriend at the time, her name got drawn, so she got to go in the booth.
• 21:50
  The reality of the money booth or whatever they call it was that there was a lot of singles.
• 21:56
  I think that you can choose what kind of denominations of currency you put in that booth.
• 22:01
  And they had chosen to put quite a few singles.
• 22:03
  Some fives, I there were some tens, but no like, I don't think there were any hundreds or anything.
• 22:07
  I don't know, but Fran didn't get any hundreds.
• 22:11
  But I remember standing outside the booth, like cheering her on saying, the money!
• 22:17
  That was a wild party.
• 22:18
  I believe that was the party that at the end of it, we took the subway back to Brooklyn.
• 22:23
  We got off the train at whatever stop we were stopping at.
• 22:26
  And yeah, I ended up like just sitting down and throwing up all over like the subway station.
• 22:33
  Not my best moment.
• 22:36
  But Fran was very nice and she cleaned me up and helped me get home and all that.
• 22:42
  The funny thing is I asked for a raise soon after that Christmas party and they said that they couldn't give me a raise and I was thinking, well, maybe if you hadn't like rented a
• 22:53
  money booth at your Christmas party, you could afford to give me a little more money.
• 22:57
  But whatever, priorities, right?
• 23:00
  Priorities.
• 23:13
  excited about the holidays.
• 23:15
  But I do miss, I I remember being home for Christmas one year when I was like in college or out of college and it was like maybe one of the first years my sister wasn't home for
• 23:25
  Christmas and I remember having a distinct thought that like, oh yeah, Christmas isn't the same anymore and it never will be, you know?
• 23:36
  Like you can never recapture that magic of being a kid and the Christmas and then you don't realize it's going away until it's just gone.
• 23:46
  You know?
• 23:48
  Because it used to be magical.
• 23:50
  How do we recapture that as adults?
• 23:53
  Drugs?
• 23:54
  I don't know.
• 23:55
  Do I have to do mushrooms on Christmas to recapture that magic?
• 23:57
  I don't think that would work out.
• 23:59
  I think that would probably be a terrible idea.
• 24:02
  But an interesting one.
• 24:04
  Good idea for a movie or something.
• 24:06
  I guess it's just tricky getting older, you know?
• 24:09
  And it's such a weird paradox that when you're a kid, all you want is to get older.
• 24:14
  And then when you get older, you're just like, I wish.
• 24:17
  I mean, I don't wish necessarily that I was young again, but you know what I mean.
• 24:21
  I wish I had that childlike innocence.
• 24:23
  I wish I could do it one more Christmas with the excitement, you know, the waking up on Christmas morning and yeah.
• 24:32
  Maybe once we die and...
• 24:34
  go into whatever happens next.
• 24:36
  Maybe there's Christmas excitement all the time.
• 24:39
  So I'm going to write like a self-help book.
• 24:43
  The next life is Christmas all the time or something, you know, some idea.
• 24:48
  Would you buy that?
• 24:49
  I'll sell it if you would.
• 24:50
  Maybe I should make a t-shirt.
• 24:52
  The next life is Christmas all the time.
• 24:54
  I need to make it pithier than that.
• 24:56
  It's got to be more direct.
• 24:58
  I'll think on that.
• 24:59
  If anybody has any suggestions, you can email them to me at onefjefpod@gmail.com.
• 25:12
  We used to do the manger set thing.
• 25:14
  You know, I was raised Catholic.
• 25:16
  And so we had the manger, you know, with the weird like little play set with Jesus and the shepherds and stuff like that.
• 25:24
  And there's little cows and sheep and stuff.
• 25:27
  It is weird.
• 25:28
  I used to love to put it together.
• 25:30
  I remember being very excited about putting it together every year for a period of time.
• 25:35
  And then as I got older, I started taking the cows, you know, and putting them on the roof.
• 25:41
  of the manger, which is a place they couldn't possibly have gotten to.
• 25:46
  Anyway, eventually I just started putting Jesus on the roof.
• 25:50
  Because why not?
• 25:51
  Jesus would think that would funny.
• 25:52
  I would think he would think it was funny.
• 25:55
  When I see a manger sometimes at other people's houses, I will kind of covertly put the Jesus on the roof, just because I like the idea of them like later on that night.
• 26:05
  Why is Jesus on the roof of the manger?
• 26:11
  Oh, it was Jef.
• 26:12
  It was Jef.
• 26:13
  Yeah.
• 26:15
  I'm not stealing Jesus because that seems wrong.
• 26:18
  Like that's more than a light bulb stealing Jesus.
• 26:22
  And it'd be super awkward to go back to wherever the manger was and be like, I'm sorry, I stole your Jesus.
• 26:28
  A lot of them probably wouldn't care all that much.
• 26:31
  I think that happens, you know, in these outdoor manger sets every year, somebody steals Jesus.
• 26:36
  Cause he's the obvious one to steal.
• 26:38
  Like who you going to steal?
• 26:38
  One of the three wise men?
• 26:40
  Shh.
• 26:41
  Boring.
• 26:42
  A sheep?
• 26:44
  You gotta steal the creme de la creme, if you will.
• 26:48
  Jesus Christ.
• 26:51
  In the swaddling clothes, in the manger.
• 26:54
  Quite a tale, we tell ourselves.
• 26:57
  I mean, perhaps that part was true.
• 26:58
  I don't know.
• 26:59
  I don't know when the Bible, like, goes from being a true story or relatively true story into fiction.
• 27:07
  Or if it ever, maybe it's just all fiction.
• 27:10
  I don't know.
• 27:11
  I mean, Jesus probably existed, I think.
• 27:13
  So maybe there was a manger and he, you know, the swaddling clothes.
• 27:17
  I mean, his mom wasn't a virgin.
• 27:19
  We can all agree on that.
• 27:21
  That's a ridiculous idea.
• 27:23
  Unless like our genetic code has changed profoundly in the 2000 years that have passed since then.
• 27:30
  But I don't know.
• 27:31
  I think some fish can reproduce without men, but humans cannot, as far as I know.
• 27:38
  But Jef, it's a miracle, don't you see?
• 27:40
  It's a Christmas miracle.
• 27:43
  Yes, yes, yes.
• 27:48
  All of that aside, I truly hope that all of you guys, all of you listeners are having a wonderful holiday season.
• 27:56
  I hope you can embrace the joy.
• 27:58
  Hope you can embrace the people you're with.
• 28:01
  Hope you can appreciate the moment while it's happening, because it is only this moment.
• 28:06
  It's really all there is.
• 28:08
  It's all there has ever been, so sit with that.
• 28:13
  And if you do have a manger in your house, or in your friend's house,
• 28:18
  I do suggest that you covertly take that Jesus out of that manger and put that Jesus on the roof of the manger.
• 28:28
  Jesus would think it was funny.
• 28:32
  I'm going to bookend this Christmas episode with yet another remarkable rendition of a Christmas classic by me as a child.
• 28:43
  I hope you enjoy it.
• 28:47
  My name is Jeffrey again.
• 28:50
  We don't have much time.
• 28:51
  The tape is running out.
• 28:53
  I'm going to sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas.
• 28:55
  We wish you a Merry Christmas.
• 28:57
  We wish you a Merry Christmas.
• 28:59
  We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
• 29:04
  What good tidings did we bring?
• 29:09
  to you and your kid.
• 29:12
  Good tidings for Christmas and a happy new year.
• 29:15
  We wish you a Merry Christmas.
• 29:17
  We wish you a Merry Christmas.
• 29:19
  We wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
• 29:25
  We all like the guitar.
• 29:27
  We all like
• 29:29
  We all like piggy pudding, so bring some right here.
• 29:33
  We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
• 29:40
  We won't go until we get some, we won't go until we get some, we won't go until we get some, so bring some right here.
• 29:49
  We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
• 29:58
  Yay!
• 30:07
  I'll see you next week.