A random Christmas episode about flawed Santa myths, childhood memories, unhinged holiday parties, and the pressure to find joy in a season that carries so much weight.

And me singing!

It's like Christmas morning, but in the form of a podcast episode.

Please show some support for the podcast and get access to some extra content by subscribing to the Patreon page: http://www.patreon.com/onefjef

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You can also call the podcast and leave a voicemail at 1-669-241-5882 and I will probably play it on the air.

Thank you for listening, please do it again, but on Christmas morning.

Onefjef is produced, edited & hosted by Jef Taylor.

My name is Jeffrey and I am going to sing Jingle Bells.

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Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

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Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

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Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

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Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

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Jeffy has a little cold so if he coughs don't worry.

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This is Alison again.

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forgot to clap.

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We forgot to clap.

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Like the audience did.

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Ho, ho, ho, this.

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is episode 30 of onefjef.

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The number 30 stands out because it works both practically and symbolically.

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It's highly divisible, which is why time and geometry rely on it, and it also carries

meaning.

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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

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real.

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Together, 30 marks a threshold where flexibility turns into responsibility and creativity.

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gets used, not just imagined.

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Hello again my friends.

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Merry Christmas, happy holidays, so forth and so on.

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I hope you were all donning your gayest apparel.

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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.

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And most of all, I hope that the Lord has come.

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It is two days before Christmas.

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I am here at my mom's house in Westlake, Ohio, trying to locate the Christmas spirit

wherever it may be hiding.

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Have you found it?

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I hope you have.

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Yeah, Christmas is weird.

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Christmas is heavy, but Christmas is also a solid excuse to go out of your way to find

joy.

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The ironic thing about Christmas is it's oftentimes one of the hardest.

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times of the year to find joy.

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Because it's so complicated.

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And it's also raining outside.

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And like, if it's not going to be a white Christmas, that's fine.

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But don't rain, right?

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Don't rain.

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You hear me, Mother Nature?

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I got my eye on you.

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Anyway, speaking of joy, something that's given me joy in this last year is starting this

podcast and slowly growing an audience.

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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.

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So thank you to all of my continuing Patreon subscribers.

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I truly appreciate you.

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You help support the podcast.

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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.

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For as as $5 a month, can help support the podcast, help me, and enter a world of

gumdrops, candy canes, and cheese sandwiches.

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So everyone, please go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up in whatever way you

would like.

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I've been recording random thoughts about Christmas for the last couple of weeks and

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That's about what this episode's gonna be.

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I've also dug out a few things from my archive, so hopefully that's also exciting.

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And as always, thank you for listening.

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Thank you for being here.

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Here's me in my car, driving home for Christmas.

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I'm driving north on I-71 heading to the west side of Cleveland to my mother's house to

celebrate the holidays.

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Sister and my nephew will be coming up.

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I'm always in a good mood when I am driving up to Cleveland for the holidays and today is

no exception.

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I'm in a pleasant mood.

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The sun is setting, there's not a cloud in the sky.

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Unleaded gas is only $2.45 at the Flying J.

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What more can you ask from this life?

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Anyway...

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feel like the internet has probably ruined the Santa Claus myth for lot of kids.

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I don't think that you could be using the internet and still believe in Santa Claus.

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Although the internet doesn't really go out of its way to say Santa doesn't exist.

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It's actually pretty good about that.

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It's just if you did a search for it.

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Like if you Google, is Santa Claus real?

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I wonder what you'd get.

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I'm guessing no.

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I'm guessing that's what you'd get.

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No.

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No.com.

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Or if you ask Chachipiti, it'd just be like a long, long thing about the origins of Santa

Claus.

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But no, Santa Claus isn't real.

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Santa Claus isn't real as a literal man who delivers presents in one night.

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But the character is based on a real historical figure, Saint Nicholas, known for

generosity.

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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.

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I remember believing in Santa, you know, and I remember thinking it was remarkable that

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He could do that, like deliver presents to everybody, all the kids in the world in one

night on a sleigh that flies.

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You know, don't get me wrong, it's a flying sleigh.

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But still, that's a lift.

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Has there ever been anybody who's tried to explain how that works?

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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.

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I mean, you must have a very good logistics team.

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Why is the government not getting the technology from Santa?

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You would think the military would be interested in whatever technology Santa has to pull

off that stunt in one night.

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So the argument breaks down pretty quickly with the Santa thing.

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But there was a while, I mean, I remember it like putting out cookies and a note for Santa

and Santa would write back.

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And it was like, really?

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This is Santa was here?

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And my parents did a good job of like, making us believe it.

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Like doing things to make it seem like, you know.

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Easter Bunny too, actually.

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I remember believing in the Easter Bunny.

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I don't even know what the story is there.

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Is that similar to Santa, but you're just hopping?

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In which case, that's also super impressive.

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Should look into that too.

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Steroids, probably.

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Easter Bunny's on steroids.

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But yeah, Santa Claus.

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I dressed up as Santa Claus one time.

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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.

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Yeah, they had me wear the Santa costume.

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Because I guess I'm the token white guy and Santa, you know, and most of the things is

white.

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I think Santa's white in Korea too, right?

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Or is he Korean?

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I think he's white everywhere.

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Not saying he should be, just saying he probably is.

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But yeah, I dressed up like Santa and they had me do pictures with all the students.

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So I have some of these funny pictures of me dressed as Santa with a bunch of Korean

children around me.

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Weird.

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And I'm a skinny Santa too.

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Like it's not, I'm not really pulling it off because I mean I look ridiculous in this

costume.

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So skinny like it was hanging off me.

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The beard kind of worked but even the beard was bigger than my face so I don't know.

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But it's the thought that counts.

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was in high school.

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I was in the choir.

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One year we, during the holiday season, we went to a shopping mall to sing in this giant

Christmas tree.

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Like, it was like a Christmas tree with like a platform so you could stand on it.

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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.

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And frankly, I remember it swaying quite a bit.

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I don't think it was meant to hold the amount of weight.

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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.

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I being a dumb kid.

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I was just taking a light bulb off a tree.

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People did laugh.

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So I don't know if it was the next day or the same day, but got back to high school after

this.

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And our choir teacher was a cool guy.

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Everybody liked him.

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He got along with everybody.

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He was like one of the guys or whatever.

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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.

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He was angry.

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And he made me go back to the mall and give the light bulb back and apologize.

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Which, as a 52 year old looking back, it seems like an excessive punishment really.

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It was one light bulb.

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Like, maybe I'm just defensive about it, but

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I really don't think that the punishment was quite equal to the quote unquote crime.

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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.

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I didn't say that part, but it did.

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And they said, thank you.

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And then I left.

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And that was it.

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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.

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That's what I should have said.

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And then here's the light bulb, but I didn't do that.

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Hindsight.

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It's always easier to come up with a good line afterwards.

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So that happened on one Christmas.

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My grandmother used to hate the song, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.

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When that song came out, it was a huge, huge hit.

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It was all over the radio.

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We all thought it was hilarious.

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I was probably 10, 11, 12 years old.

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Just a hilarious song.

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I mean, it's still kind of funny.

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It's a little dated, I think, but it is still kind of funny.

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But Grandma, she did not, she did not like that song.

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I I suppose for obvious reasons, but it almost seems too on the nose, doesn't it?

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Grandma liked Alf quite a bit as well, the alien.

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When I was in Russia, when I was in my 20s, I don't know if it was Moscow, I think it was

Moscow.

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If there was one channel I remember that played Alf, kind of like all day, but like dubbed

in Russian.

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So it'd be like, Zdravsvu Te Vinny.

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If you remember the show, Alfie used to be like, hey Vinnie.

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So drasfutiy means hello, hey in Russian.

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Do you understand?

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I don't need to paint you a roadmap.

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Years after Alf had kind of gone off the cultural radar in the United States, it was still

going strong in Russia.

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Good for Alf.

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Interesting thing about that show is it just kind of ended with Alf getting taken away by

the FBI and that was it.

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They plan to do another season, but it got canceled.

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So the end of the show is just like the FBI coming and taking Alf away.

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And that's it.

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That's the end of the show.

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That's the end of the show.

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I wonder how my grandma felt about that one.

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Alf, I'm going to find a good Christmas this year.

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You know, I'm going to find it.

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I'm going to look in my head and I'm going to focus on it.

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I'm going to tell myself, you find that good Christmas.

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And I wish that for all of you as well.

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Let's all do our best to take a deep breath this Christmas.

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Close our eyes and focus our best on finding a good Christmas.

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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.

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When I was younger, there was so much build up to Christmas.

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The advent calendars read countdown open one every day and it's boring.

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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.

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And now they have candy and stuff in it, which is better for sure.

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But like, why was I so excited to open these little advent calendar doors?

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Me and my sister would fight over who could open the doors that day.

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Because it was exciting.

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Because Christmas was coming.

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Because Santa was coming.

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It's a hype machine, the advent calendar.

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It's essentially what it is.

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And a good one at that.

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I wonder if kids still get that excited about Christmas.

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Because honestly, now that I think back on it, when I was a kid, it was really just like

commercialism on steroids, right?

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Every commercial would be Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.

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They used to send out the Christmas catalogs.

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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.

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I didn't say that, but I mean, that's the implication.

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And they did make me happy for a period of time.

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A lot of them did.

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Yeah.

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trying to think of like the best Christmas gift I ever got.

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I don't know.

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I was very excited when I got a computer for the first time.

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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.

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Little did I know that the damage that these machines would inflict upon the world 40

years later.

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I wouldn't change a thing.

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I wouldn't change a thing.

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Would I?

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What reality are we in anyway?

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Christmas in Hollis by Run DMC uh is a banger, as the kids say.

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And I say now.

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I think we're all allowed to say banger now.

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And not just because it was in Die Hard, that's where it was introduced.

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The Mr.

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Hankey, the Christmas Poo is also a classic Christmas song.

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Mr.

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Hankey in general, the South Park episode about the talking piece of poo who saves

Christmas is honestly one of the funniest and best.

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Christmas specials of all time.

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Mr.

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Hankey sings and dances and he says, and he teaches everybody the real spirit of

Christmas.

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A piece of poo.

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So check that one out if you haven't seen that one because it's a Christmas classic.

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The Christmas song, Nat King Cole, the strings at the beginning, you know, gets me.

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Also the picture like chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

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I don't know what that looks like.

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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.

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I don't eat nuts.

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So I have no idea what, that is like.

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Has anybody ever had chestnuts roasting over an open fire?

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If you have had chestnuts roasting on an open fire and eaten them, please email the

podcast at onefjefpod@gmail.com.

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I really want to know.

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I would submit that.

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Very, very few people have done that.

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However, the image of it, the idea of it, you get the vibe.

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You get it.

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Why is that?

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It's strange, isn't it?

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Because chestnuts could taste terrible.

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Maybe you're not even supposed to cook chestnuts on an open fire.

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Maybe it's like makes them taste terrible, but it doesn't matter because you hear the line

and you're like, chestnuts.

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Yeah, roasting, open fire, cozy.

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But then Jack Frost is nipping at your nose.

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So you're outside because it's an open fire.

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All right, we've established that.

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Yuletide carols being sung by a choir and folks dressed up like Eskimos.

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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.

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I've always liked Feliz Navidad quite a bit, which means Merry Christmas in Spanish.

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Doing some Spanish lessons, doing Duolingo, so you're welcome.

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One time, it was my cousin's wedding.

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My cousin Brian was getting married.

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This was, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago.

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And it was at a hotel, or we were staying at a hotel.

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There was a hotel bar and we were hanging out.

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A lot of the cousins were hanging out in the bar.

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think most of them actually.

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With my uncle, Joe.

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We were all sitting at the bar and there was a karaoke thing going on.

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So Uncle Joe, I think he said he would buy everybody shots or buy me a shot if I went up

and sang something.

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And it was, think, July.

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I don't know what month they got married in, but I'm pretty sure it was the summertime.

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but I did Feliz Navidad.

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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.

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So I kind of just mumbled through.

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tore the place down.

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had the men singing on their own, I had the women singing on their own.

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if I did it it probably would be amazing.

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I'm much better at Spanish.

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m

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Simply having a wonderful Christmas time.

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Simply having a wonderful Christmas time.

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Simply having a wonderful Christmas time.

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A lot of suicides to that song around the holidays.

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Because I think that's the only response you could have.

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if you aren't having a wonderful Christmas time and you hear that song come on.

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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.

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And don't get me wrong, the Beatles were great.

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But that song, that Paul McCartney nightmare of a song,

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There's nobody who can convince me that that's a good Christmas song.

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Anyway.

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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.

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I was working at this, it was like a production company.

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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

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yada.

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It was really weird.

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place to work.

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uh But it was thriving.

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The company was doing very well.

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Anyway, I think it was the first holiday party that I went to of theirs.

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It was something else.

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I took my girlfriend at the time.

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It was at the office, which was in Midtown Manhattan.

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And they had a, I mean, a beyond full bar, like every kind of liquor you could possibly

imagine.

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They had a spread of food unlike anything you've ever seen.

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You know, they had a photo booth with different costumes and so forth like everybody has.

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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.

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It's like a money booth.

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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.

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You know, you drew, they drew names to see who could get to go in there.

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I never seen anything like that ever again at any party.

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I didn't even know you could rent those.

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My girlfriend at the time, her name got drawn, so she got to go in the booth.

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The reality of the money booth or whatever they call it was that there was a lot of

singles.

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I think that you can choose what kind of denominations of currency you put in that booth.

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And they had chosen to put quite a few singles.

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Some fives, I there were some tens, but no like, I don't think there were any hundreds or

anything.

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I don't know, but Fran didn't get any hundreds.

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But I remember standing outside the booth, like cheering her on saying, the money!

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That was a wild party.

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I believe that was the party that at the end of it, we took the subway back to Brooklyn.

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We got off the train at whatever stop we were stopping at.

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And yeah, I ended up like just sitting down and throwing up all over like the subway

station.

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Not my best moment.

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But Fran was very nice and she cleaned me up and helped me get home and all that.

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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

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money booth at your Christmas party, you could afford to give me a little more money.

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But whatever, priorities, right?

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Priorities.

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excited about the holidays.

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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

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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?

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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.

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You know?

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Because it used to be magical.

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How do we recapture that as adults?

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Drugs?

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I don't know.

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Do I have to do mushrooms on Christmas to recapture that magic?

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I don't think that would work out.

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I think that would probably be a terrible idea.

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But an interesting one.

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Good idea for a movie or something.

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I guess it's just tricky getting older, you know?

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And it's such a weird paradox that when you're a kid, all you want is to get older.

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And then when you get older, you're just like, I wish.

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I mean, I don't wish necessarily that I was young again, but you know what I mean.

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I wish I had that childlike innocence.

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I wish I could do it one more Christmas with the excitement, you know, the waking up on

Christmas morning and yeah.

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Maybe once we die and...

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go into whatever happens next.

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Maybe there's Christmas excitement all the time.

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So I'm going to write like a self-help book.

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The next life is Christmas all the time or something, you know, some idea.

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Would you buy that?

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I'll sell it if you would.

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Maybe I should make a t-shirt.

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The next life is Christmas all the time.

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I need to make it pithier than that.

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It's got to be more direct.

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I'll think on that.

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If anybody has any suggestions, you can email them to me at onefjefpod@gmail.com.

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We used to do the manger set thing.

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You know, I was raised Catholic.

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And so we had the manger, you know, with the weird like little play set with Jesus and the

shepherds and stuff like that.

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And there's little cows and sheep and stuff.

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It is weird.

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I used to love to put it together.

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I remember being very excited about putting it together every year for a period of time.

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And then as I got older, I started taking the cows, you know, and putting them on the

roof.

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of the manger, which is a place they couldn't possibly have gotten to.

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Anyway, eventually I just started putting Jesus on the roof.

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Because why not?

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Jesus would think that would funny.

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I would think he would think it was funny.

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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.

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Why is Jesus on the roof of the manger?

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Oh, it was Jef.

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It was Jef.

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Yeah.

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I'm not stealing Jesus because that seems wrong.

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Like that's more than a light bulb stealing Jesus.

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And it'd be super awkward to go back to wherever the manger was and be like, I'm sorry, I

stole your Jesus.

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A lot of them probably wouldn't care all that much.

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I think that happens, you know, in these outdoor manger sets every year, somebody steals

Jesus.

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Cause he's the obvious one to steal.

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Like who you going to steal?

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One of the three wise men?

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Shh.

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Boring.

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A sheep?

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You gotta steal the creme de la creme, if you will.

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Jesus Christ.

389

In the swaddling clothes, in the manger.

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Quite a tale, we tell ourselves.

391

I mean, perhaps that part was true.

392

I don't know.

393

I don't know when the Bible, like, goes from being a true story or relatively true story

into fiction.

394

Or if it ever, maybe it's just all fiction.

395

I don't know.

396

I mean, Jesus probably existed, I think.

397

So maybe there was a manger and he, you know, the swaddling clothes.

398

I mean, his mom wasn't a virgin.

399

We can all agree on that.

400

That's a ridiculous idea.

401

Unless like our genetic code has changed profoundly in the 2000 years that have passed

since then.

402

But I don't know.

403

I think some fish can reproduce without men, but humans cannot, as far as I know.

404

But Jef, it's a miracle, don't you see?

405

It's a Christmas miracle.

406

Yes, yes, yes.

407

All of that aside, I truly hope that all of you guys, all of you listeners are having a

wonderful holiday season.

408

I hope you can embrace the joy.

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Hope you can embrace the people you're with.

410

Hope you can appreciate the moment while it's happening, because it is only this moment.

411

It's really all there is.

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It's all there has ever been, so sit with that.

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And if you do have a manger in your house, or in your friend's house,

414

I do suggest that you covertly take that Jesus out of that manger and put that Jesus on

the roof of the manger.

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Jesus would think it was funny.

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I'm going to bookend this Christmas episode with yet another remarkable rendition of a

Christmas classic by me as a child.

417

I hope you enjoy it.

418

My name is Jeffrey again.

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We don't have much time.

420

The tape is running out.

421

I'm going to sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

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We wish you a Merry Christmas.

423

We wish you a Merry Christmas.

424

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

425

What good tidings did we bring?

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to you and your kid.

427

Good tidings for Christmas and a happy new year.

428

We wish you a Merry Christmas.

429

We wish you a Merry Christmas.

430

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

431

We all like the guitar.

432

We all like

433

We all like piggy pudding, so bring some right here.

434

We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry

Christmas and a Happy New Year.

435

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.

436

We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry

Christmas and a Happy New Year.

437

Yay!

438

I'll see you next week.